Blanchette nodded again.
'We will see what the new star is like, first,' she answered. 'It is not a mere handsome nobody with a turn for the stage who will excite her jealousy: she is too proud to be easily jealous.'
'The girl is magnificent,' said Loswa, as he thought. 'Jealousy is always alive, even if love has been dead a century.'
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The day after the morrow they kept their word to each other. She descended at the little station of St. Cyr, and found her horse and groom and those of Loswa waiting for her. Loswa and she bade their men stay at the station there, and rode themselves through the country ways which lie between St. Cyr and Les Hameaux. That if anyone chanced to see them their meeting would look like an assignation, did not trouble the thoughts of the Princesse de Laon for an instant; there were far too many much more weighty imputations which she incurred daily to allow so trivial a possible charge as this would be to have any terrors for her. She delighted in the creation of scandal, in the risks of equivocal positions; and challenged both the admiration of her husband and the long-suffering of her world with the most daring and shameless of provocations. She knew that to those who dare much, much is forgiven; she knew that the world would never quarrel with her. It feared her tongue too greatly.
It was scarcely noonday when they reached the quiet fields which stretched around the Croix Blanche. There were the greenness and freshness of very earliest spring in all the land; little birds were flying and twittering, with thoughts of coming nests, to be hidden away under orchard blossoms, and the sheep were cheerfully cropping the short grass which covered the ruins of Port Royal. All these things and the memories which went with them said nothing to Blanchette; all she knew of spring was the dates of the various races, and all she knew of history was that it gave you travesties for costume balls.
They left their horses in charge of a labouring servant, who was sitting resting under one of the ash trees to eat his noonday bread, and then, crossing the courtyard, pushed their way without ceremony past the dairy-wench who tried to stop them and learn their errand, and so, without either announcement or apology, opened the door at the head of the wooden stair and found themselves in the chamber of Damaris.
She was sitting reading at a table, the white dogs lay at her feet; a great volume was open on the table before her, her head leaned on her hand, which was hidden in the masses of her close-curling hair. As she started at the unclosing of the door and rose to her feet, and restrained the dogs with a gesture, the intruders upon her privacy were both astonished to see the development which her beauty had taken since the night two years before when she had stood, bewildered and astray, like a young night-hawk brought into a lighted house from the shadows of night, in the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond. She did not speak; she remained motionless, her hand on the head of the male dog; she recognised Loswa instantly, with a sense of pain and of regret that he had found her there; his companion she was not conscious of ever having seen before.
'Here is Loris Loswa, whom you will remember, and I am Madame de Laon,' said Blanchette, advancing towards her, with her abrupt familiarity, her eyes roving all over the place and coming back to fasten themselves with envy on the beautiful lines of the girl's throat and bosom.