“Dear Ronsard!” she cried; “I ever loved him!” and then she began to read some of his verses, and stopped with a conscious blush.
“Let me read you something that I love,” said Roger; and turning the leaves at random, he found a stanza full of sentiment, which he read so meaningly that the color deepened in Michelle’s usually pale cheeks.
After that, Roger took a mean advantage of her admission that she loved Ronsard, and often, when they were riding alone together, would he read to her from that poet of the heart—and read so well that it was plain Pierre Ronsard was speaking for Roger Egremont. The volume was a kind of talisman. With it Roger could at will bring the blood surging into Michelle’s fair face, make her glance sidewise at him with a tell-tale light in her eyes, and render her blind and deaf to all except the poet’s magical words.
The very happiest time of all was three days of storm they spent in the charcoal-burner’s hut. It was new to them both to see a storm-swept mountain forest, the wind roaring along the rocky gorges, bearing down the sturdy pines and larches in its madness, and wrapping sky and mountains in a shroud of black rain and mist. Roger and Michelle watched it together from the one unglazed window of the hut, and were lost in admiration at the beauty and fury of the tempest. They were safe in the little secluded place where the charcoal-burner had built his rude shelter. The ladies slept in the hut, the gentlemen lodged in the chaise. The servants slept in a hut still poorer and ruder, a short distance off. There was food and a plenty of good wine, thanks to the maître d’hôtel, and the gentlefolks rather liked their strange experience. The servants grumbled much. On the third night, when the dun clouds that almost rested on the tree-tops had drifted sullenly southward, and the angry wind had been soothed, the full moon came out gloriously. Roger was not indiscreet enough to propose to Michelle a prospect of the scene by moonlight; his recollection of the moonlight at Vitry was too recent and too poignant. But going out of the hut, where by the light of a single candle Madame de Beaumanoir with Berwick and François played primero, he cast a sly and meaning glance back at Michelle.
When he had been gone five minutes and the old duchess was deep in her game, Michelle rose, and wrapping her cloak in which she had sat more closely about her, opened the door silently and slipped out. Leaning against the door-post was Roger Egremont.
“Look, mademoiselle,” he said; “the trees are so still—so still, and so white on their tops, and so black under their branches; and listen—you can hear the singing of a dozen waterfalls.”
Michelle listened, and the voices of the falling waters made the night musical.
“You will see many nights like this,” she said, “but I shall not. Remember me sometimes when you are in a lonely mountain place like this, and something recalls this spot.”
“Remember you!” replied Roger, in a low voice, and said no more; but he looked at her hard in the bright moonlight and saw what he wished to see in her melting eyes. He took her little warm hand in his; he needed not to speak, and the hand he held fluttered, but made no effort to escape.
“And will you think of me sometimes at Orlamunde?” he asked.