She drew her slender figure up in the dusk and looked at him with an approving glance as if to say, "You are of other fibre than the baseborn."
"Oh, sweet Cyrène!" he exclaimed, then checked himself, appalled at his presumption, and added, "Alas, what am I saying? Heaven knows I am mad."
"Hush, hush!" she shuddered, glancing back over her shoulder.
Germain turned and caught sight of a shadow advancing. It proved to be the Abbé.
"Excuse the messenger of Madame," said he. "She asks you, Baroness, to take a hand at piquet."
She courtesied graciously to Germain and moved away, followed by the Princess's black parasite. When she passed through the immense glass door which looked from the card-room upon the terrace, and his eyes could no longer follow her loveliness, Lecour turned towards the lake and exclaimed in a low voice—
"There must be some way to win the paradise on earth and this seraph. Castle of ages past, frown not too hardly upon me. You represent what I love—the grand, the brave, the historic, the fair."
* * * * *
As he paced his chamber after the household had retired, the recollection of the day became an elixir, exciting and delicious.
The room was in one of the four towers of the château. Sitting down, he looked out through an open window upon the peace of the night-world. There were the gardens, quiet, lovely and ghostly, the weird water, the stately grove beyond it. He sat by the window more than two hours, while the events just over crowded through his brain.