“I served the Seigneur, good Mother,” I answered, “and I would lay down my life for ma’m’selle.”
“You would hear?” she asked, pointing to the panel.
I nodded.
“You speak French not like a Breton or Norman,” she added. “What is your province?”
“I am an Auvergnian.”
She said no more, but motioned to me, enjoining silence also by a sign, and I stood with her beside the panel. Before it was a piece of tapestry which was mere gauze in one place, and I could see through and hear perfectly. The room we were in was at least four feet higher than the other, and we looked down on its occupants.
“Presently, holy Mother,” said I, “all shall be told true to you, if you wish it. It is not your will to watch and hear; it is because you love the lady. But I love her, too, and I am to be trusted. It is not business for such as you.”
She saw my implied rebuke, and said, as I thought a little abashed, “You will tell me all? And if he would take her forth, give me alarm in the room opposite yonder door, and stay them, and—”
“Stay them, holy Mother, at the price of my life. I have the honour of her family in my hands.”
She looked at me gravely, and I assumed a peasant openness of look and honesty. She was deceived completely, and, without further speech, she stepped to the door like a ghost and was gone. I never saw a human being so noiseless, so uncanny. Our talk had been carried on silently, and I had closed the panel quietly, so that we could not be heard by Alixe or Doltaire. Now I was alone, to see and hear my wife in speech with my enemy, the man who had made a strong, and was yet to make a stronger fight to unseat me in her affections.