I obeyed. She gazed at me searchingly, then withdrew her head again. Reappearing very soon, she said: "Madame has decided to trust you. These are her apartments. There is a door from a gallery where pictures hang—"
"I have been to that gallery," I interrupted, "but I was watched while there. Is there no other way?"
She thought a moment. "Yes, the garden. At the foot of the terrace, turn to the right, till you get to the end of this wing."
"But the man at the steps yonder will stop me. He has done so already."
"That beast! Alas, yes! Well, I will go and talk with him, and keep him looking at me. You go down to the terrace without attracting any attention, walk close to the house till you get to this end of the balustrade, step over the balustrade, descend the bank as quietly as possible, and wait behind the shrubbery near the door at the end of this wing,—it's the door from Madame's apartments to the garden. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly."
"Then I will be talking to that man by the time you can get to the terrace. I go at once. Be quick, Monsieur,—and careful."
Admiring the swift wits and decision of the girl, I hastened through the corridor, down the stairs, and into the hall. The Count and the long-nosed man were so buried in their game that neither looked up. A pair of varlets in attendance were yawning on a bench. Yawning in imitation, I passed with feigned listlessness to the terrace, went noiselessly along by the house-wall, and followed the wing to the end of the balustrade. I did not venture even to look toward the steps, but I could hear the maid talking and laughing coquettishly. I crossed the balustrade by sitting on it and swinging my legs over: then strode on light feet down the grassy bank and through an opening in the shrubbery I saw at my right. I found myself in a walk which, bordered all the way by shrubbery, ran from a narrow door in the end of the wing to the other extremity of the garden. The door, when I first glanced at it, was slightly ajar: I supposed the maid had left it so. But as soon as I had come to a halt in the walk, the door opened, and a very young, very slender, very sad-faced, very beautiful lady came out, with eyes turned upon me in a mixture of hope and fear.
I instinctively fell upon my knee before that picture of grief and beauty. She wore, I remember, a gown of faded blue, and blue was the colour of her eyes—a soft, fair blue, like that of the sky. She was so slim, sorrowful, small, childlike, forlorn,—I would have died to serve her.
She looked at me searchingly, as the maid had done, but with more courtesy, and then, in a low voice bidding me follow her, led the way down the walk and into a side path that wound among some tall rose-bushes. Here we could not be seen from the walk and yet we might hear anybody approaching. She stopped and faced me.