"'But she will live Catholicly,'" quoted the Count with a smile. He spoke as if he was pleased (as indeed he was) that the laborious negotiations had ended in the Prince getting what he had been striving for from the first, namely, the lady without any conditions as to her faith, for a Protestant wife was obviously impossible for a noble of King Philip. Rénèe had watched the troubled course of the tangled diplomacies of guardian and suitor with equal disdain for the Elector who gave his niece to a Papist for his own convenience and the Prince who took a bride, who was to him a heretic, merely because it suited his ambitions.
Louis of Nassau noticed her silence; he had remarked before that she was strangely quiet and also that she was exceedingly comely. His glance, quick to appreciate and admire fair women, now fell kindly over her graceful figure, her face so finely coloured and so delicate in line, the rose carnation of lip and cheek, the glow of the heavy, carelessly dressed hair.
"I wonder what you think of?" he said.
Rénèe started at the personal address, she had been so long a mere part of the background that when one treated her as an individual it always confused her.
"What should I think of, princely Count?" she answered. "Foolish things, of course."
Louis handed the ring and the violet gem to Duprès, who packed them into little cases of cedar wood.
"You do not look as if your thoughts were foolish," he replied, with more gravity than she had ever associated with him.
"Nay, I think she is a very wise lady, noble seigneur," said the alchemist.
"Your thoughts, then?" smiled Louis of Nassau.
Rénèe's deep-set indifference to all things overcame her momentary confusion.