“Stay but one moment more, royal lady,” entreated De Lorges, as the dauphine turned to go; “one word, for mercy. How fares the king? Is there no more hope? Does he still lay as he has done ever since that fatal stroke?”
Mary looked at him somewhat surprised, and very sorrowfully.
“No, Montgomeri, no!” she said, after a pause of much feeling; “the soul has escaped the shattered prison, and Henri is at rest.”
Montgomeri staggered back with a heavy, almost convulsive groan. He knew not till that moment how powerfully hope had sustained him. The shock was almost as fearful as if he had never thought of death; and yet the horrible conviction that he was a regicide had scarcely for one instant left his mind.
“Montemar, let not this be, for the sake of thy poor child, of both. Part them ere long,” whispered the queen (dauphine no more), as the count knelt before her in involuntary homage; “think not of us now. Would to God we were still Dauphine of France and not her queen. Montgomeri’s danger, I fear, is imminent; let him not linger, and may our Lady guard him still.”
She departed as she spoke; and Montemar, infected with her evident anxiety, hesitated not to obey.
“Rouse thee, Montgomeri,” he said, earnestly; “fly, for the sake of this poor, drooping flower; let not our Idalie weep for a darker doom than even this sad parting. Come to thy father’s heart awhile, my child. Have I no claim upon thy love?”
Gently he drew her from Montgomeri’s still detaining arm, almost relieved to find her insensible to any further suffering. His beseeching words to fly ere Idalie again awoke to consciousness, moved the count to action. Still he lingered to kiss again and again the pale cheek and lips of his beloved; then convulsively wringing the count’s hand, rushed from the room and from the palace at the very moment that voices shouted “Long live Francis the Second, God preserve the King!”
III.
Eighteen months had passed, and still was the Count de Montgomeri an exile from his country; and so virulent was Catherine against him, so determinately forgetful of Henri’s last words, absolving the count of all intentional evil, whatever might ensue, that even his best friends dared not wish him back. For Idalie, this interval was indeed heavy with anxiety and sorrow, and all the bitter sickness of hope deferred. No doubt of his affection ever entered her heart; she knew him fond and faithful as herself; but there seemed no end, no term to the long, long interval of absence. Her future was bounded by the hour of meeting, and a very void of interest, and hope, and pleasure seemed the space which stretched between. Yet, for her father’s sake, her ever unselfish nature struggled with the stagnating gloom. The court was loathsome to them both, for even the friendship of the young queen could not remove from Idalie the horror which Catherine de Medicis inspired. In the Chateau de Montemar, then, these eighteen months had mostly been passed, and Idalie compelled herself to seek and feel interest in the families of her father’s vassals, and in the many lessons of feudal government and policy which, as the heiress of all his large estates and of his proud, unsullied name, her father delighted to pour into her heart.