Poor Gabriel! he has made knots to his knees of salmon-color and blue, the hues of the Charrebourg livery. It is by the mute eloquence of such traits of devotion that his passion humbly pleads. He wishes to belong to her. When first he appears before her in these tell-tale ribbons, the guilty knees that wear them tremble beneath him. He thinks that now she must indeed understand him—that the murder will out at last. But, alas! she, and all the stupid world beside, see nothing in them but some draggled ribbons. He might as well have worn buckles—nay, better; for he suspects that cursed Jacque understands them. But in this, indeed, he wrongs him; the mystery of the ribbons is comprehended by himself alone.
He and Jacque passed round the corner of the quaint little cottage; they were crossing the bowling-green.
"And so," sighed poor Gabriel, "I shall not see her to-day."
"Hey! Gabriel! Jacque! has good Marguerite done with you?—then play a game of bowls together to amuse me."
The silvery voice that spoke these words came from the coral lips of Lucille. Through the open casement, clustered round with wreaths of vine in the transparent shade, she was looking out like a portrait of Flora in a bowering frame of foliage. Could anything be prettier?
Gabriel's heart beat so fast that he could hardly stammer forth a dutiful answer; he could scarcely see the bowls. The beautiful face among the vine-leaves seemed everywhere.
It would have been worth one's while to look at that game of bowls. There was something in the scene at once comical and melancholy. Jacque was cool, but very clumsy. Gabriel, a better player, but all bewildered, agitated, trembling. While the little daughter of nobility, in drugget petticoat, her arms resting on the window-sill, looked out upon the combatants with such an air of unaffected and immense superiority as the queen of beauty in the gallery of a tilting-yard might wear while she watched the feats of humble yeomen and villein archers. Sometimes leaning forward with a grave and haughty interest; sometimes again showing her teeth, like little coronels of pearl, in ringing laughter, in its very unrestrainedness as haughty as her gravity. The spirit of the noblesse, along with its blood, was undoubtedly under that slender drugget bodice. Small suspicion had that commanding little damsel that the bipeds who were amusing her with their blunders were playing for love of her. Audacity like that was not indeed to be contemplated.
"Well, Gabriel has won, and I am glad of it, for I think he is the better lad of the two," she said, with the prettiest dogmatism conceivable. "What shall we give you, Gabriel, now that you have won the game? let me see."
"Nothing, Mademoiselle—nothing, I entreat," faltered poor Gabriel, trembling in a delightful panic.
"Well, but you are hot and tired, and have won the game beside. Marguerite shall give you some pears and a piece of bread."