"Goodnight, father," answered the servant, and left him, taking the same precaution as before of turning the lock and withdrawing the key, lest any one should open the door from the side of the chapel. Father Walter instantly rose, and put his ear to a small round hole, like the mouth of a tube, at the side of the door. The servant's steps were distinctly heard passing down the nave of the chapel, and then suddenly became faint as they issued forth into the court. The priest listened for a moment longer; but no other sound was heard.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The morning broke clear and fair; a few light clouds indeed hung about the eastern sky, but only sufficient to catch the rays of the rising sun, and gather them together, in a more intense glow. But these were soon dispersed; and the sky beamed, within five minutes after the break of dawn, in clear and unclouded beauty. Those clouds, however, were still hanging over the verge of heaven, and not above half the disc of the orb of light showed itself above the horizon, when the Marquis de Chazeul, full dressed, left his own apartments, and hurried to those of his mother. As he went, the sound of a hunting horn was borne upon the wind to his ear; and pausing for a moment, with all that fierce, tenacious jealousy of the rights of the chase, which was entertained by the old feudal nobles of France; he muttered, "It must be a bold man, or well accompanied, to hunt so near the Château de Marzay. This must be seen to;" and striding on, he entered his mother's ante-room with very little respect for the half-completed toilet of her maids.
The Marchioness was still in bed; but, according to the custom of the day, she made no scruple of admitting any one who came in that situation; and her son was speedily at her bed-side. "Well, Chazeul," she said, with a shrewd smile, "the thing is done, I find; but tell me all about it. You did not disturb her I suppose?"
"No," answered Chazeul, "I found everything as still as death; and so I left it. I might have been tempted, indeed, to look in between the curtains, if I had had light enough to see my fair bride as she lay slumbering. I was afraid she might wake too."
"No great matter if she had," replied Madame de Chazeul. "The priest was not in his chamber; and the girl Blanchette would have been discreet."
"I don't know that," replied Chazeul.
"You don't know what?" demanded the Marchioness.
"I don't know that you are right in either the one or the other," answered her son; "for, as I went in, I certainly heard a noise in the next room, as if some one were locking the door, and there was a light, too, came through the key-hole. Then, as to Blanchette, she seemed to be seized with a sudden fit of perverseness. It cost me a full hour and a hundred lies, to persuade her to do as she was bid."
"The hour's time was a loss," observed his sweet mother; "as to the lies, that was no great expense. They are money easily coined. But I will teach that girl obedience before I have done with her. The hussy! it was but to enhance the price.--The priest in his room!--Ay, so he might be. Now I recollect, he was wandering about at that hour. And now, my dearly beloved son, between you and me, your absence for the next two or three hours, might be more advantageous than your presence. I have got to communicate your delinquency, you know, to my good brother, De Liancourt--in other words to tell him--ay, and prove to him too, that you have been seen creeping in and out of fair Rose's chamber at midnight; and it is ten to one that his first indignation falls upon you. That must have time to cool before you make your appearance; and in the mean time there is plenty to be done."