'But how will you reach the château?'
'Antoine awaits me with a fiacre, at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec.'
'But an escort?'
'I have the Chevalier d'Ische, and his friend, disguised as Swiss musketeers—adieu!'
'Adieu, dear Nicola!' and we separated.
'Fool that I was not to get a parting kiss from her!' thought I, as she tripped away and disappeared. 'In all this there is some strange mystery; that young girl is no more a waiting-maid than I am shah of Persia!'
At that moment the clock of St. Germain l'Auxerrois struck twelve, and the Viscount Dundrennan came to take my place at the postern.
'Bravo! a petticoat!' said he, just as Nicola disappeared; 'are the sentinels doubled here at night? I deemed this the most dreary post on the Louvre.'
I made him an answer in the same jocular vein, and rejoined my comrades in the guard-room, or salon of the Garde du Corps Ecossais, and the events of the morrow left me little time for reflection, and less for inquiry.