Merodé's offer of marriage, after every other means of persuasion had failed, she considered a fresh insult; and about an hour before, he had left her, with a remembrance that the three days he had given her to think of it were rapidly drawing to a close.
"I assure you, my dear Gabrielle," he had said, in his usual easy and assured way; "your marriage with me will suit your father's ideas exactly. In fact he will be quite delighted to find that he is still likely to have a son-in-law a count; for by this time he will probably have learned all I told you yesterday, of poor Kœningheim's death. Now, if he had not been in such a devil of a hurry to die, old Rupert-with-the-Red-Plume would have had both his daughters countesses; but let us not despair, for of counts there are more than plenty between this and the ramparts of Belgrade."
A voice below her window startled her; she looked down, and saw a tatterdemalion, with a shock head of dark hair, that mingled with an enormous and untrimmed beard, holding in his hands a conical white hat and knotted stick, and with a long knife in his girdle. He was seated on a fragment of that rock on which the castle was built; and one side of which jutted into the tideless sea, while the outworks seemed to be based on drifted sand. The stranger waved his battered hat. Gabrielle shuddered and withdrew with a sudden emotion of anger; for she remembered the pretended valet of Bandolo, and their voyage in the dogger of Dantzig.
The visiter muttered an oath, and shrunk close to the wall, lest a Merodeur, who leaned on his musket on the bartisan of the tower overhead, should observe him. After a time Gabrielle resumed her seat at the window, but immediately rose again, for the man was still there. He made many signs which she did not understand; sometimes touching his hat; at other times placing one finger beside his nose and winking slily; then kissing his hand and laying it on his heart.
These were all Master Bernhard's modes of evincing a desire to communicate something that was secret and important, while at the same time he vowed fidelity and truth—and no doubt the memory of the helmet full of trinkets, &c., awaiting him at Hesinge, made the rascal (for the time) true as steel to his mission.
Believing that he was mocking her, Gabrielle again withdrew with a sad and swelling heart; for now such a trivial circumstance as the supposed insolence of this man fretted her.
On her pretty face disappearing a second time, Bernhard uttered a tremendous oath, gave his conical hat a violent punch on the crown, and began to whistle on two of his fingers, uttering low and peculiar notes, indicative of various things best known to himself, who had acquired this accomplishment in the common prison and Rasp-haus; but fears of the sentinel recurred to him, and he was compelled to revert to patience and rending his beard, which made his face closely resemble a black furze bush, with a cat looking out of it.
After a time Gabrielle returned to the window. The sun had now set; its golden beams still lingered on the wavelets of the Belt; but the man was yet beneath her window, seated on the shelf of rock, where the yellow sea was rippling; and again he greeted her with his whole vocabulary of nods, winks, and signs.
"This is strange pertinacity," thought Gabrielle; "the man is intoxicated!"
At last, after searching in a deep pocket of his tattered doublet, he fished up a little note, and displayed it with a glance of triumph, holding the while his conical hat between it and the castle, lest the sentinel should see. It was evident that he cared less about being seen himself, than having his letter intercepted.