"If I shall be glad?" he said, and for the first time Rénèe noticed the lines of fatigue and anxiety beneath the brilliant eyes and on the fair brow.
"We shall all be glad," said Duprès, with the freedom he always assumed, "when the little lady is safely in the Netherlands."
"Not I," said Rénèe. "I would rather live in Saxony than Brussels."
"Does the Lady Anne hold that opinion?" asked the Count.
The question at first amazed Rénèe, then she swiftly recalled how Anne had been shut away and guarded by the Elector (her sickly unattractiveness being more hedged about than beauty, for fear reports of her should reach and disgust her prospective husband), and that Louis could only have obtained rare glimpses of her, and never have had an opportunity to know her temper nor her mind as the waiting-woman knew both.
"My mistress is very glad to go to Brussels, and very devoted to His Highness," she answered conventionally, adding, with more feeling, "She is very young, princely Count, and frail, and the excitement of these days exalts her spirit."
"She does not regret Saxony, I think," remarked the alchemist, "which is well for the future tranquillity of His Highness."
"Nor is she afraid of a Papist Court, eh?" asked the young Count with a frank laugh. "I believe the maiden thinks more of her gowns and her new titles than of the sermons and prayer books she leaves behind."
He spoke carelessly, slipping a ring with a dark honey coloured stone on his finger the while. Rénèe wondered at him.
"Her Grace will remain of the Reformed Faith," she said.