"No one is here—no one," stammered Duprès, but he backed before the door, and he was colourless and quivering.
"She is there, and I will take her away," cried Rénèe. "Who is with her—who?"
"Go, go!" implored Duprès; "there is none here but a young wench who serves me. Oh, gods and angels!" he cried in real terror, as Rénèe slipped behind him and seized the handle of the door.
She thought he was going to strike her or use his short dagger on her, and she did not care; but the irresolution and the mocking fatalism that were so strongly in this man's character kept him from action.
"There is an end now," he said cynically, and stepped behind the great chair where Rénèe had sat.
The waiting-woman opened the door.
The inner room was glowing with a rich firelight which warmed the chilly gleam of the stormy daylight; the round table was set with a lace cloth and all manner of sweets, cakes, fruits, and wines; and before it, on a long couch, sat the Princess of Orange and Jan Rubens, the young lawyer.
One of his arms was round her waist, one of hers round his neck; their flushed faces were pressed together, and they were endeavouring to drink out of the same goblet, a rare thing of rock crystal, in the form of a fish, mounted in rubies and gold.
All this Rénèe saw in a breath, and while she saw she realized her own utter failure, the uselessness of all her years of effort, of watchfulness, of endurance, of patience; she had been outwitted like a fool. Anne had eluded her, and gone straight to that shame, that degradation from which Rénèe had laboured to save her; not even this service had she been able to render the Prince, and that was the bitterest thought of all.
She stood silent, holding the door open, and the two at the table stopped their foolish laughter and rose. Rubens dropped the goblet; the wine spilt over his crumpled ruff and his violet velvet suit.