"Pardon, Monseigneur! you say that you may not return here for a long time?"
"Yes, André."
"And am I not to accompany you?—and perhaps not to see you again for a long while?" added André, who seemed both sorrowful and embarrassed at this information.
"That may well be, no doubt," said Gabriel.
"But Madame de Castro," rejoined the page, "before I quitted her intrusted to my care a message, a letter for Monseigneur—"
"And you have never yet given it to me, André?" said Gabriel, warmly.
"Pardon me, Monseigneur," André replied; "I was instructed not to deliver it unless you were to return from the Louvre either very sorrowful or in a state of angry excitement. Only in such case Madame Diane told me to give Monsieur d'Exmès the letter, which contained what might be a warning to him and perhaps a consolation."
"Give it me, quickly, give it me!" cried Gabriel. "Advice and consolation could not arrive more opportunely, I fear."
André drew from his doublet a letter very carefully wrapped up, and handed it to his new master; Gabriel hurriedly broke the seal, and withdrew to a window recess to read it.
This is what he read:—