"We must part now, my sweet," he would say. "I am going to demand my birthright. When I am admittedly a King, I shall send for you. If you do not answer, I shall become my own envoy. You will make a beautiful Queen, Joan. You and I together will raise Kosnovia from the mire of centuries."
Somewhat stilted lovemaking this; but what was a poor fellow to do who had been taken from the Rue Boissière and plunged into empire making, all in the course of a summer's evening?
He crossed the Pont Neuf without ever a look at Henri Quatre. That was a pity. The sarcastic Béarnais grin might have revealed some of the pitfalls that lay ahead. At any rate, the King of Navarre could have given him many instances of a woman's fickleness—and fickleness was the ugly word that leaped into Alec's puzzled brain when an ancient dame at Joan's lodgings told him that Mademoiselle and her maid had gone away that afternoon.
"Gone! Gone where?" he asked blankly.
"It is necessary to write," said Madame, and shut the door in his face, since it is forbidden in the Quartier for good looking and unknown young men to make such urgent inquiries concerning the whereabouts of discreet young women like Mademoiselle Joan.
Léontine, still scrubbing, came to the rescue. Never had she seen any one so distinguished as this Monsieur. Mon Dieu! but it was a pity that the belle Américaine should have packed her boxes that very day! And diminutive Léontine was romantic to the tips of her stubby fingers.
"M'sieu'? wishes to know where he will find the young lady who lives there?" said she archly, jerking her head and a broom handle toward the neighboring house.
"But yes, my pretty one," cried Alec.
"Well, Pauline said—Pauline is her domestic, see you—said they were going to the forest to paint."
"To Fontainebleau?"