"Me?" arching her finely penciled brows. "Oh, I'm thinking of staying here, becoming a nun, and restoring the Mount to its old religious prestige."
"Then I'll come back a monk," he returned in the same tone.
"If you come back at all!" provokingly. "There, go! The others will soon be out of sight!"
"I, too—alas, Elise!"
He touched his horse; rode on, but soon looked back to where, against a great, grim wall, stood a figure all in white gleaming in the sunshine. The Marquis stopped; drew from his breast a deep red rose, and, gazing upward, gracefully kissed the glowing token. Beneath the aureole of golden hair my lady's proud face rewarded him with a faint smile, and something—a tiny handkerchief—fluttered like a dove above the frowning, time-worn rock. At that, with the eloquent gesture of a troubadour, he threw his arm backward, as if to launch the impress on the rose to the crimson lips of the girl, and then, plying his spurs, galloped off.
And as he went at a pace, headlong if not dangerous and fitting the exigencies of the moment, my lord smiled. Truly had he presented a perfect, dainty and gallant figure for any woman's eyes, and the Lady Elise, he fancied, was not the least discerning of her sex. And had he seen the girl, when an unkind angle of the wall hid him from sight, his own nice estimate of the situation would have suffered no change. The Mount, which formerly had resounded to the life and merriment of the people from the court, on a sudden to her looked cold, barren, empty.
"Heigh-ho!" she murmured, stretching her arms toward that point where he—they—had vanished. "I shall die of ennui, I am sure!" And thoughtfully retraced her steps to her own room.
But she did not long stay there; by way of makeshift for gaiety, substituted activity. The Mount, full of early recollections and treasure-house mystery, furnished an incentive for exploration, and for several days she devoted herself to its study; now pausing for an instant's contemplation of a sculptured thing of beauty, then before some closed door that held her, as at the threshold of a Bluebeard's forbidden chamber.
One day, such a door stood open and her curiosity became cured. She had passed beneath a machicolated gateway, and climbing a stairway that began in a watch-tower, found herself unexpectedly on a great platform. Here several men, unkempt, pale, like creatures from another world, were walking to and fro; but at sight of her, an order was issued and they vanished through a trap—all save one, a misshapen dwarf who remained to shut the iron door, adjust the fastening and turn a ponderous key. For a moment she stood staring.
"Why did you do that?" she asked angrily.