"Come, Madame," said Madame de Leviston, who was vexed a little perhaps by these leave-takings and delays, "remember that you must be at Caen before night."
Diane, almost suffocated with her sobs, rushed off without more ado to her chamber after signing to Gabriel to wait for her. Enguerrand and Madame de Leviston followed her, and Gabriel waited.
After an hour or so, during which the luggage that Diane was to carry with her was stowed away in the carriage, Diane appeared, all ready for the journey. She asked Madame de Leviston, who followed her about like a shadow, to allow her to take one last turn around the garden, where she had spent twelve years in careless, happy play. Gabriel and Enguerrand walked behind her while she made this visit to her old haunts. Diane stopped before a bush of white roses which Gabriel and she had planted the year before. She picked two roses, one of which she fastened in her dress, while she breathed a kiss upon the other and gave it to Gabriel. The young man felt that she slipped a paper in his hand at the same time, and he put it hastily into his doublet.
When Diane had said adieu to all the paths and all the groves and all the flowers, she had to make up her mind to take her departure. When she reached the carriage which was to take her away, she shook hands with each of the servants, and with the good folks from the village, who knew and loved her every one. She had not strength to say a word, poor child; she only gave each of them a kind nod of the head. Then she embraced Enguerrand, and Gabriel last of all, with no signs of being embarrassed by Madame de Leviston's presence. In her friend's embrace she found her voice a moment, and when he said, "Adieu! adieu!" she replied, "No, au revoir!"
Then she entered the carriage that was waiting, and childhood, after all, seemed not quite to have lost its hold on her, for Gabriel heard her ask Madame de Leviston, with the little pout which became her so well,—
"Have they put my big doll up there somewhere?"
Away went the carriage at a gallop.
Gabriel opened the paper Diane had handed him; in it he found a lock of the fair yellow hair that he used to like so to kiss.
A month later, Gabriel, having arrived in Paris, presented himself to Duc François de Guise, at the Hôtel de Guise, under the name of Vicomte d'Exmès.