Swift and quietly as a mouse she glided from the room and softly closed the door of her chamber and turned the key in a lock, which Garnache had had the foresight to keep well oiled. He breathed more freely when it was done.
A step sounded in the guard-room. He sank without a rustle into the chair from which he had risen, rested his head against the back of it, closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and dissembled sleep.
The steps came swiftly across the guard-room floor, soft, as of one lightly shod; and Garnache wondered was it the mother or the son, just as he wondered what this ill-come visitor might be seeking.
The door of the antechamber was pushed gently open—it had stood ajar—and under the lintel appeared the slender figure of Marius, still in his brown velvet suit as Garnache last had seen him. He paused a moment to peer into the chamber. Then he stepped forward, frowning to behold “Battista” so cosily ensconced.
“Ola there!” he cried, and kicked the sentry’s outstretched legs, the more speedily to wake him. “Is this the watch you keep?”
Garnache opened his eyes and stared a second dully at the disturber of his feigned slumbers. Then, as if being more fully awakened he recognized his master, he heaved himself suddenly to his feet and bowed.
“Is this the watch you keep?” quoth Marius again, and Garnache, scanning the youth’s face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache’s mind, but his face maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and, with a wave of the hands towards the inner chamber,
“La damigella a la,” said he.
For all that Marius had no Italian he understood the drift of the words, assisted as they were by the man’s expressive gesture. He sneered cruelly.
“It would be an ugly thing for you, my ugly friend, if she were not,” he answered. “Away with you. I shall call you when I need you.” And he pointed to the door.