"Yes. Unhappy because I never know when that man--my husband--may cross my path again. Oh, if I could be sure I should never see him more!"
"At least he can never harm or annoy you. Have no fear of that. Remember, he knows that Archibald and I are in Paris, and, of course, believes that Douglas is here also. His dread of us will keep him away. He will trouble you no more. And if he should come--which is of all things most unlikely--why, I shall be near at hand to shield and protect you."
"You will always be near me?" she asked. "Always now? Oh, promise, Bertie; promise me that you will never disappear again."
"Of course, I promise. Why, where should I go to?" and he laughed as he asked. "My life is now bound up with the regiment. Short of campaigns nothing can take me far from you."
"Yet," she replied, "I fear--fear always. It is only when you are near that I feel safe--feel that I have one who is a brother to stand between me and harm."
"Yes," he said, "as a brother. It can never be anything else than that now--yet, as a brother, I will not fail you."
So they went back to Paris as they had come, the royal visit being over.
And then it seemed at last as if, with some few changes, things were to be almost as they had once been, though it is true that, instead of the old house in the Rue Trousse Vache, she and her father were lodged in a mansion which was in fact a palace, that Douglas was gone out of their life forever, and that she was a wife in name, though nothing else.
Bertie came at least once a week to Paris from St. Denis, both to pay his respects to his prince--as he regarded always Charles Edward--and also to see her, and brought her flowers from the gardens round that old town. But he brought no news from Archibald as to his having been successful in discovering who the murderer of Douglas was. The priest had, indeed, written to them once or twice from Amiens, but he either refrained from mentioning the subject at all, or, if he did so, said that he could discover nothing, and that any idea he might have had on the matter was, he now feared, a futile one.
"I began to also fear," Bertie said, as he talked it over with Kate, "that it was indeed a futile one--that never now will he be avenged. Poor Douglas! Who could have desired his life--who have struck so foul a blow?"