“André—you—you are back?” she said, and the colour flooded into her cheeks.
“Thank God, yes.”
“And well?”
“Perfectly. My wounds are healed. I am a prisoner no longer, and in a fortnight I return to the Low Countries to seek revenge from my enemies and yours, Denise, the English.”
Her grey eyes flashed, then dropped modestly. “You will find revenge, little doubt,” she said, “the Maison du Roi are soldiers worthy of the noblesse and of France. But do you not come to Versailles first?”
“No. My company is not on duty this month at the Palace and in April we shall all be with His Majesty in Flanders.”
“Yes,” she answered, “I forgot.”
She began to stroke her horse’s neck in some embarrassment. André gazed at her with the hungry eyes of a starved lover, and indeed this girl was worthy of a soldier’s homage. Neither a brunette nor a blonde, for her eyes were grey and their lashes almost black, though her hair was fair and the tint of her cheeks in the morning air delicate as the tint of a tender rose. Beautiful, yes! but something much more than beautiful. A great noble this lady surely, one who saw in kings and queens no more than an equal, and in palaces the only fit home of beauty nobly born, one to whom centuries of command had bequeathed a tone and quality which men and women can inherit but not acquire.
“And when I return,” André said at last, “shall I find at Versailles what I desire more than revenge?”
“What is that?” she asked innocently.