'Wait—wait!' she cried stupidly. The horses dashed onward. Nadine threw her a silver piece, seeing only a supplicant figure between her and the light.
One of the men in the gateways picked up the coin and tendered it to her. She repulsed it with a gesture.
'When can one see her?' she asked in a low tone.
The servant stared. 'See her? Why never, unless you know her and she sends for you;' then, being good-natured, he added, 'what is it for?—all petitions go to the secretaries.'
'I want nothing of her,' said Damaris. 'I want to speak to her.'
'Then you will wait for a century,' said the young man, and looking at her he thought, 'I think it is the girl who was here last summer. I heard that they had made an actress of her, and that Othmar kept her somewhere out Versailles way. What can she be doing on the streets?'
Then, being of a mischievous humour, and deeming that it would be good sport to bring about any scene which would be disagreeable or embarrassing to the master whose bread he ate and whose livery he wore, the fellow added, as if in simple good nature, 'you could get speech with either of them more readily at Amyôt: they go down there in a day or two for Easter; they have some royal people.'
Damaris did not answer him; she turned away with one long look at the house which had sheltered her in her homelessness and misery. Was the master of it there, she wondered? She did not ask. She did not dare. After what Blanche de Laon had said to her, she shrank from the thought of meeting his eyes.
She went wearily from the gates as she had come to them; her purpose was baffled, but not beaten. The vague impulse which had taken her there, had been only strengthened by momentary defeat; the momentary vision of his wife's face had made her the more passionately long to clear herself from disgrace in those cold eyes. She remembered a garden-door in the garden wall opening out into a bye-street: when she had been carried out under the trees in her convalescence, she had seen gardeners go to and fro through it, and dogs run in and out when it stood ajar; she turned away into the quietude of this little side street, and walked beneath the garden wall until she came to the little entrance which had been a postern-gate in older Paris days. It was standing open as she had so often seen it, the gay branches of budding lilac and laburnum showing through it. She passed in unseen, and waited under the shadow of the boughs.
The gardens were as still as though they were the gardens of Amyôt; the peacocks swept with stately measured tread across the lawns, the fountains were rising and falling under the deep green shade of groves of yew and alleys of cedar. It was three in the afternoon, the shadows were long, the silence was complete. She sat down on a rustic bench, and waited; for what she scarcely knew. But the purpose in her was too deeply rooted in her heart to let her go thence with its errand undone.