“Good-bye, dear Roger, good-bye,” he cried again, and then turning ran back through the garden toward the house. Roger walked along the dark, narrow street in the spring twilight. The bell was still tolling solemnly. It was still saying “Farewell.”
He went to his inn, got his horse, the third Merrylegs, and rode back to St. Germains at a sharp gait. He roused himself somewhat from his depression, but a conviction settled upon his soul that he should never again see Dicky Egremont.
Next morning he got a message early from Berwick: “Be prepared to start within twenty-four hours.”
There was, then, but a day before him. He had not yet been to see Madame de Beaumanoir, Roger meaning every day to go, but putting it off as men do unpleasant things. But that was his last chance. Moreover, François Delaunay, who had been absent for a time, returned and came to the castle to see him, and to bring him a reproachful message from the old Duchess.
François was the same François—good-hearted, timid, and still unsuccessfully attempting a rakish air and swashbuckler manner.
“The Duchess is still the same,” he confided plaintively to Roger, as the two walked up and down the terrace in the March sunshine. “God never made but one such woman, I think.”
“At least she has not a bad heart,” replied Roger, consolingly, but laughing at the same time.
“N—n—no,” dubiously assented François; “but—think of a woman who has spent ten years trying to make a swashbuckler out of me!”
And as François tapped himself gloomily on the breast, Roger was obliged to confess to himself that Madame de Beaumanoir had set herself an impossible task.
In the afternoon he took his way along the familiar road to the avenue of the château. He knew every step he trod. Here was the entrance into the forest, where the French King’s messenger had brought the letter to Michelle on that spring morning, just five years ago almost to the day. There was that woodland path from the meadow, where he and Michelle had walked hand in hand, a shepherd and his shepherdess, on that August evening, after the hay-making. He could scarcely believe, as he stepped upon the marble terrace and entered the great hall of the château, that her graceful figure would not presently appear, and that he should not hear her charming voice. And he dared not let his mind dwell on her state at that moment.