"Alas! I fear for the prince!" cried De Coucy, "in his bad uncle's hands."
"Hush! hush!" replied Salisbury. "John is my brother, though I be but a bastard. He has pledged his word too, I hear, to treat his nephew nobly. So let us to the town, where we shall hear more. In the mean while, however, let me send to the earl of Pembroke; for, by the manœuvres he is making, he seems as ignorant of what has taken place in the town, as you were. Now let us on."
CHAPTER XII.
We must change the scene once more, and return to the palace of Philip Augustus. The whirlwind of passion had passed by; but the deep pangs of disappointed expectation, with a long train of gloomy suspicions and painful anticipations, swelled in the bosom of the monarch, like those heavy, sweeping billows which a storm leaves behind on the long-agitated sea.
Philip Augustus slowly mounted the stairs of the great keep of the castle, pausing at every two or three steps, as if even the attention necessary to raise his foot from the one grade to the other interrupted the deep current of his thoughts. So profound, indeed, were those thoughts, that he never even remarked the presence of Guerin, till at length, at the very door of the queen's apartments, the minister beseeched him to collect himself.
"Remember, sire," said the bishop, "that no point of the lady's conduct is reproachable; and, for Heaven's sake! yield not your noble mind to any fit of passion that you may repent of hereafter."
"Fear not, Guerin," replied the king: "I am as cool as snow;" and opening the door, he pushed aside the tapestry and entered.
Agnes had heard the step, but it was so different from her husband's general pace, that she had not believed it to be his. When she beheld him, however, a glow of bright, unspeakable joy, which in itself might have convinced the most suspicious, spread over her countenance.
Philip was not proof against it; and as she sprang forward to meet him, he kissed her cheek, and pressed her in the wonted embrace. But there is nought so pertinacious on earth as suspicion. 'Tis the fiend's best, most persevering servant. Cast it from us with what force we will--crush it under what weight of reasoning we may, once born in the human heart, it still rises on its invisible ladder, and squeezes its little drop of corroding poison into every cup we drink.
The queen's women left the room, and Philip sat down by the embroidery frame where Agnes had been working before she went out. He still held her hand in his, as she stood beside him; but fixing his eyes upon the embroidery, he was in a moment again lost in painful thought, though his hand every now and then contracted on the small fingers they grasped, with a sort of habitual fondness.