"Madame la Baronne de la Roche-Vernay, and Monsieur de Répentigny."
He looked hastily around.
It was then that two ladies were seen hurrying into the arena from the direction of the Trianon. One was the Duchess de Mouchy; the other, of the same age and dressed in a simple cloud of white tulle, came behind her, and Germain, as if in an apparition, saw his Cyrène. Her obeisances to the Queen and company over, she turned and courtesied very deeply to her lover, who trembled with delight under her smile.
He was quickly recalled by the voice of de Vaudreuil, this time crying—
"Her Majesty of France, and her Majesty's servant and subject the High Priest of the goddess."
It was the invariable custom of the ambitious and confident courtier to appropriate the Queen to himself.
Pausing at the close, he raised his arm ritually towards the trees and rested thus a moment speechless.
"Descampativos!" he suddenly exclaimed in a stentorian tone, throwing off his robe.
At the word, the pairs broke ranks, the ladies screamed with merriment, and all the pairs scampered into the woods in different directions to follow what paths might suit them, bound only by the rule of the game to return in an hour.
Germain and Cyrène strayed from the others into the groves, until the voices grew fainter and fainter and at last died away. They walked on without finding any necessity of speaking, for their glances and the ever sweet pang of love in their breasts sufficed. At last they found a little space with a fountain where the water spurted up in three jets out of the points of a Triton's spear, and there being a seat there, they took it, sat down, and looked in each other's eyes.