"Oh! Nigel! Nigel!" she sighed. "Your love is the love of a man that comes and goes in gusts, roaring like the wind, gentle as the breeze, and then it is gone till it awakens again. I say not you are inconstant, but you do not fear, as woman does, the hour of emptiness when there is no lover, no husband."
"By Heaven! I am no inconstant, Stephanie! I can bide my time, and if I lose not my life in these wars, surely there shall be a roof-tree in bonnie Scotland waiting us."
"To-morrow, all being well, the Archduchess shall send for Colonel Charteris to the Long Gallery, but for a brief talk of the affairs of state. The following evening I shall try to meet you here at the same time to say farewell. But remember how we may be beset, and use a double caution. Look for a way into the gardens by another avenue than the palace. Now I leave you! Do not follow! Wait a full half-hour! Make sure you are not spied upon! Make a wide circuit to the orangery and have a glib excuse if you are met. Good-night."
For a brief half-hour Nigel waited, exploring the orchard close. There were two other gates, by one of which the Archduchess had beaten her retreat. No sign of any lurking spy made itself apparent. This time Cæsar's daughter had escaped suspicion, and the lovers had their precious hour of interlude.
Nigel's mind was more at rest after he had made the circuit of the place and sounded every shadow by the aid of the fitful moon. More than ever alive to the privilege of her love, he was equally alive to the danger that she ran. Histories and mysteries of the courts of Italy, of Spain, of France, sprang to life in his mind, things read, or heard in the guard-room, or handed down in fearsome stories of the hearth at home. The fairy princess had been folded in his arms, had breathed kisses of mortal joy upon his lips, had gone. If she were not a fairy princess, then a thousand unknown dangers threatened them. He could guess Maximilian as one very possible architect of evil; only Maximilian was just then preparing to defend Bavaria, and could know nothing if the very wind shouted "Nigel and Stephanie." Father Lamormain was another, nearer home, absolutely inexorable in working out his plans. At present in ignorance of this princely indiscretion he was friendly towards Nigel, but let him gain an inkling and Nigel felt that their projects of happiness would be thwarted by means impossible for himself and her to foresee and to avoid.
As he turned the key in the lock and took one farewell look of that wintry orchard before closing the gate behind him his mind was full of joy; and as the gate closed joy fled before foreboding.