By what means the other conspirator would reach the rendezvous he did not know, but from the rambling building of the palace many doors led into the gardens. Few of them showed any trace of usage, but one no doubt led to the private apartments of the Archduchess.
Once more the moon befriended him, but this time she seemed to Nigel to be like himself, or perhaps more justly like his mistress. For, fitfully gleaming, now wholly to be seen, now half in shadow, now again wholly lost, the moon seemed to scurry from one clot of cloud, ragged and grey and wintry, to another hiding-place still more opaque, and always scurrying. Nigel knew well it was the wind in the upper air that drove the clouds across her face, but the image pleased him as he went by purposely circuitous ways towards the orchard close, his key securely in his pocket, his cloak wrapped round him, his hat pulled down well across his brows, his sword in its place at his side.
There was nothing languorous about this night, nothing effeminate but the moon. But in chill December, as in soft breathing June, an assignation with a maid is as fruitful of lovers' walks and the exercise of lovers' patience.
So he drew near to the orchard close, and paused in the shadows before he set key to lock.
Now that he was so near he felt more of love's awe. He wondered if it had been some rustic maiden—Elspeth Reinheit, for example—he would have felt it. But of Elspeth Reinheit he had never felt in such a way. Many maidens in many places had cast questioning, subtly troubling, glances at him, and always till he had seen her, whom he had deemed Ottilie the mysterious, their glances had fallen from him like spent arrows from a buckler. She alone was above all different in kind, a creature of a lone world where he was a hardy adventurer. He was a new Pizarro penetrating a deserted temple of the Incas, and finding a solitary priestess whose lofty mien and more than human beauty forbade him to desecrate the sanctuary, while she chanted in an unknown tongue songs of infinite allurement.
He thrust the key into the lock.