"Who has not?" she retorted, sharply. "He is as brave as he is distinguished. Farewell. If you served him better, and yourself less, you—"
"Would serve myself better in the end?" he interrupted, satirically. "Thanks, good Jacqueline. A woman makes an excellent counselor."
Disdainfully she smiled; her face grew cold; her figure looked never more erect and inflexible.
"Why," she remarked, "here am I wasting time talking when the music is playing and every one is dancing. Even now I see a courtier approaching who has thrice importuned me." And the jestress vanished in the throng as abruptly as she had appeared.
Thoughtfully the duke's fool looked, not after her, but toward a far end of the pavilion, where he last had seen the princess and her betrothed.
"Caillette should now be well on his way," he told himself. "No one has yet missed him, or if they do notice his absence they will attribute it to his injuries."
This thought lent him confidence; the implied warnings of the maid passed unheeded from his mind; indeed, he had scarcely listened to them. Amid stronger passions, he felt the excitement of the subtile game he and the free baron were playing; the blind conviction of a gambler that he should yet win seized him, dissipating in a measure more violent thoughts.
He began to calculate other means to make assurance doubly sure; an intricate realm of speculation, considering the safeguards the boar of Hochfels had placed about himself. To offset the triumphs of the king's guest there occurred to the jester the comforting afterthought that the greater the other's successes now the more ignominious would be his downfall. The free baron had not hesitated to use any means to obliterate his one foeman from the scene; and he repeated to himself that he would meet force with cunning, and duplicity with stealth, spinning such a web as lay within his own capacity and resources. But in estimating the moves before him, perhaps in his new-found trust, he overlooked the strongest menace to his success—a hazard couched within himself.
Outspreading from the pavilion's walls were floral bowers with myriad lights that shone through the leaves and foliage, where tiny fragrant fountains tinkled, or diminutive, fairy-like waterfalls fell amid sweet-smelling plants. Green, purple, orange, red, had been the colors chosen in these dainty retreats for such of the votaries of the Court of Love as should, from time to time, care to exchange the merry-making within for the languorous rest without. It was yet too early, however, for the sprightly devotees to abandon the lively pleasures of the dance, so that when the duke's fool abstractedly entered the balmy, crimson nook, at first he thought himself alone.
Around him, carmine, blood-warm flowers exhaled a commingling redolence; near him a toy-like fountain whispered very softly and confidentially. Through the foliage the figures moved and moved; on the air the music fell and rose, thin in orchestration, yet brightly penetrating in sparkling detail. Buoyant were the violins; sportive the flutes; all alive the gitterns; blithesome the tripping arpeggios that crisply fell from the strings of the joyous harps.