"Ha," he said to himself, "so he, too, is in it. He is the intriguer of whom the Duchess spoke; the man who was to come here. Well! well! we shall know more to-night."
As he thought this, however, he determined that he would not wait until the full night had come ere he retired to his room and began to keep his watch, since he would thus be ready to hear all that might be said in the next one. A word to the Duchess, a hint of what he was about to do, would absolve him from any attendance on her that evening.
Jacquette came forth from the inn now, her pretty travelling escoffion on her head and her little cape around her shoulders, when, stepping across the place to where he stood with his back to her, she joined him. Then--after looking across the river towards the spot where Humphrey told her La Truaumont was seated (La Truaumont who, having seen her come out of the inn, now waved his hand gracefully to her, though half en camarade and half with the air of a roystering, boisterous soldier) she put her hand on her lover's arm and, together, they walked side by side along the left bank of the swift, rushing Rhine.
Of love 'tis certain they should talk at first--just a little--as is the case with other lovers when first they meet, and always has been since the world was young and fresh and green, and will be until it is worn out and dead and gone. Therefore, so it was now with Humphrey and Jacquette. And once, nay more than once, perhaps, when they had gotten opposite the great wind-mills on the other side and were shielded from view by the overhanging banks of the river, and hidden by the acacias growing wild on those banks, their young lips met and touched as, sometimes, the petals of one drooping crimson flower will meet and touch those of another. But each knew that they were here for something more serious at this moment than even their love, and gradually they fell to talking on the strange environments with which they, who had but lately been boy and girl together, were now surrounded. They talked of the journey that lay before them over the eternal snows of the St. Bernard or the St. Gothard, of which many travellers had spoken and written and over the former of which Humphrey's father had once himself passed on a voyage to Italy. They wondered, too, how the family of the Duchess would receive her and make a new home for her, and even wondered what the mad Duke would do to regain possession of his errant wife. And then, at last, they spoke of the whisper there was in the air--their air; that air by which they were surrounded; of the whisper that De Beaurepaire meditated some mad stroke by which he would set his life upon a cast and either lose all, including life, in that attempt, or soar still higher than even one of his house had ever soared before. "To-night," said Humphrey, in answer to a question from Jacquette, "I shall know more; perhaps all. If that happens which I think will happen, then I may know enough to prevent the Prince from rushing on his ruin. For, sweet one, I do not believe, nor will I ever believe, that he is aught but a tool, a cat's-paw in the hands of these others. La Truaumont pretends to be his follower, his servitor, yet he is, if I mistake not, the one who leads or pushes him towards the end he himself desires to obtain. While for this woman, who lives so close and snug within her rooms and is seen of none, who is she, what is she?"
"I know naught of her, or only that La Truaumont says she secretly, and unknown to him, loves De Beaurepaire."
"I understand," her lover answered. "Yet I believe that--that--as with La Truaumont so it is with this woman; she, too, pushes De Beaurepaire onward to something he would never otherwise attempt. And if she is beautiful----"
"She is beautiful," Jacquette said. "I saw her in Nancy. Poorly clad 'tis true, with poor adornments----"
"She has others now," Humphrey exclaimed, remembering the tray of handsome lace that Emérance's maid carried in her hand when they talked together at the head of the stairs.
"No doubt, no doubt," the colour returning again to Jacquette's cheeks as she spoke. "And you would say that, if she is beautiful she can lead him, wind him round her fingers as a child can wind a silken thread. He is vain and she may play upon his vanity, although--although, Humphrey--even as she does so she still may love him. If all the world speaks true, many women have loved him ere now."
"If she loves him she should not lure him to his destruction. Yet, if what I overheard last night has any truth in it, her own destruction might accompany his. La Truaumont warned her--and, as he spoke, his voice sounded sinister to me--that she might pay a heavy price for his love."