LOVE, THE ENEMY
Charles was seated on a low stool at the further end of the room, a pale-faced boy with dull, peevish eyes closely set together, the long Valois nose, and a thin, obstinate mouth. His dress was severely, obstinately, contemptuously plain. Again it was as if the King said, This is not the greatness or the glory of France! But love and care had redeemed the derisive parsimony. All the lad wore was exquisitely neat and the very severity lent the little figure a dignity of its own.
Beside him, but a little behind, stood Love, the Enemy, Ursula de Vesc, a slim figure in white. One arm was flung over his shoulder, the hand holding the boy's hand as he raised it across his breast, and she seemed to draw him back to her so that he half leaned, half lay against her knee. Her other hand was caught up against her side below the rounded breast, and pressed there so tensely that the slender, bloodless fingers lay ivory-white against the hardly purer white of the bodice. The whole attitude was one of spontaneous, natural, womanly affection, but as Stephen La Mothe looked a second time he seemed to find in it both defence and defiance, or if not defiance, then that vigilant watchfulness which is almost an antagonism. The clasping arm spoke protection, but a protection which said, "Touch if you dare."
Nor did the expression of her face change his thought. The clear grey eyes were alert with something more than a girl's fresh interest, the firm mouth, even while the lips moved, was set in an unconscious strain, and across the broad forehead two lines were shadowed where no lines ought to have been. If the face of age, when the sorrows and experience of years have written anxiety for the uncertain morrow across it, moves the heart by the story it tells, how much more the face of youth lined by cares which merciful Time should still have held unrevealed? There are more valleys of shadows than that of death, and it seemed to La Mothe that the gloom of some one of them had gathered thickly round Ursula de Vesc.
Of the three or four others grouped at the further end of the room Commines was the only familiar figure, and though all turned at the noise of the brass rings jangling on their rod as Villon drew the curtain there was no recognition in his eyes. It was the opening of the lying masquerade, and La Mothe vaguely felt the white horse stumble as it swerved from the straight course. The soiling of clean hands spoken of by Commines on the road to Château-Renaud had begun.
"Gain the girl and win the boy," whispered Villon as, with his hand upon La Mothe's arm, they walked up the room together, then aloud, "Monseigneur and Mademoiselle——"
"Monseigneur, if you please," interrupted the girl, but though she spoke to Villon her eyes were on La Mothe. The voice was cold, the words at once a self-effacement and a rebuke. It was as if she said, "I know my place: know—and keep—yours."
"Monseigneur," went on Villon, quite unruffled, "with the ills of life come their cure: Amboise was dull and I present to you Monsieur Stephen La Mothe."
The Dauphin made no immediate answer, but glanced up at Ursula de Vesc with a question in his eyes, and his clasp on her hand tightened, drawing her yet closer to him. It was the action of a child to its mother rather than that of a boy of twelve to a girl not twice his age, and to those who understood it was curiously instructive. Looking down upon him she smiled and nodded, nor did the gracious softening of the tender face escape La Mothe. Her eyes were grey, and surely grey eyes were the sweetest in all the world?
"Monsieur La Mothe," repeated Charles, as if the girl's look had given him courage to speak. "Monsieur La Mothe of—Valmy?"