Then as I gazed there stepped out into the full moonlight a man leading a powerful black horse with one white stocking and a white star in his forehead. I heard the man call some brief order to some one in the shadow, and there was a slight lisp in his voice. In a moment I understood it all, although the man was no longer wearing a countryman's coat, but the livery of a gentleman's servant. It was Pelagie and her party fleeing to Baden and the Duc d'Enghien!
I knew not whether I would be a welcome guest or an intruder, but I knew I was not going to miss this opportunity of seeing Pelagie once more. I stepped out boldly from under the shadows of the trees into the moonlight, and in so doing came near losing my life. There was the click of a lock and the flash of a gun-barrel in the countryman's hands.
"Don't shoot, Monsieur," I cried; "it is a friend."
There was a short, sharp cry, half suppressed, and Pelagie came running out of the shadow, both hands extended and her face glowing in the moonlight.
"Is it you, Monsieur?" she cried. "How came you here?"
I suppose I answered her in some fashion. I know I took her hands in mine and looked down into her beautiful eyes, but I know not what I said. She was wearing the cap and apron and simple gown of a lady's waiting-maid, and as she saw me look curiously at it she said, with the shrug of her pretty little shoulders that I had learned to know so well in St. Louis:
"It is a fright, is it not, Monsieur? But I am no longer the Comtesse de Baloit: I am Susanne, the maid of Madame du Bois, with whom I am traveling."
Her voice had the happy ring of a child's, as if she were glad to be free, even if only for a time, from the cares of rank and position; or, perhaps more truly, glad to be away from the surveillance of the duchesse, happy that she need no longer fear the chevalier and the First Consul. I longed to think that a part of the gladness was in seeing me once more so unexpectedly; but I knew this was only my foolish vanity, and I steadied my brain by saying over to myself, "She is a princess of Condé in her ancestral home; you are only the son of a plain American gentleman." So I made her such a speech as I would have made to a princess of Condé.
"If Mademoiselle were not the Comtesse de Baloit I could wish she were always Susanne the maid of Madame du Bois. 'Tis a bewitching costume."
It was, and she knew it, as I could see by her dancing eyes and the smile (that she vainly tried to suppress) playing hide-and-seek with the roses in her cheek as I spoke. Being a man, I could not name each article of her costume; but what I saw was a vision of little ringlets escaping from under a coquettish cap, dainty ankles that the short blue skirt did not pretend to hide, a snowy apron that almost covered the blue skirt, and a handkerchief demurely crossed over the beautiful shoulders.