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HE spun down the well-kept road between Versailles and Paris; two big Danish dogs ran in front to clear the way. the coachman flourished a long whip that sometimes flicked the ankles or shoulders of pedestrians who were not deft enough in leaping aside.
The cabriolet was so modish and elegant that everyone turned to gaze after it. It would certainly create a new fashion; it was closed, and the upper portion was pale lemon, the lower portion and the great wheels black. A gilt-and-scarlet coat-of-arms glittered on either door; the horse that so prancingly drew this delicate carriage was of a gleaming white colour in the May sunshine.
The one occupant carried such a large bouquet of pale lilac that the clusters of tiny blossoms blocked the windows, and she could not be seen.
With gay jauntiness the cabriolet swept into Versailles town and stopped before a flat-frond pink house with white pilasters and white swags of fruit. The little black page leapt from the box and let down the step.
Mademoiselle Hyacinthe de St. Hilaire descended, holding high the mass of lilac. It was tied with turquoise ribbons that fluttered behind her. Her dress of white lace was like a handful of foam, and her rosy hat was as a shell tilted on her loose curls. Friends came out of the house and admired the cabriolet. How exquisitely made it was! How finely upholstered with lemon-coloured velvet! How beautifully swung on the leathern straps! How commodious, fashionable, and elegant was the whole design!
Mademoiselle St. Hilaire went upstairs to her cool, beautiful room, where the glitter of all her gold and silver ware was dimmed by the shadow of the jasmine and roses that overhung her balcony, so that the blue damask-hung room was like a grotto beneath a pool, deliciously shaded by greenish and limpid darkness.
It was late afternoon. Beyond the balcony the garden was still under the radiance of a westering sun, banked with flowers, with a thicket at the end and tall Italian trees, with a fountain casting up delicate pearls of water.
Mademoiselle de St. Hilaire changed her frock. While she robed, she told Victorine, her maid, of her visit to her aunt in Paris, and her sitting to the Court painter, and how he was painting her as "Hebe" feeding an eagle from a golden platter.
“And, Victorine, I was thinking, the while he and Madame, my aunt, chattered, if only I could get on the back of the eagle and be carried far, far away!
“To England, Mademoiselle?” asked Victorine slyly.
The evening came, purple and joyous. There were lutes and violins in the house and in the garden nightingales. The stars are as brilliant as a great lady's jewels, save where the rising moon blots them from the sky.
Guests move about the house, that glitters in a thousand points, crystals, gildings, sequins from the soft reflections of a thousand candles, but Mademoiselle de St. Hilaire is in the garden with one who is no guest, but who has scaled the wall like a thief, and crouched hidden behind the syringa bushes and the tall plots of lilies. She had crept out in her cunning night-blue velvet, that hides her from all spies, and her black lace thrown over head and shoulders
Clasped close, wincing away from the encroaching ivory moonlight, they whisper their eternal love, their eternal woe—she the daughter of a peer of France, a proud, a cold, a hard man, he a young English esquire come to Paris in the train of an English Ambassador.
“Do you love me?” she said. “Do you love me?” And he could hardly distinguish her voice from that of the nightingale.
“Do I love you?” he answered. “Oh, my darling! Yet who am I to tell you that I love you, when your father’s lackeys cast me from his door?”
And they hid their young anguish among the lilies as the mounting moon discovered them. She clasped her frail hands round his strong, proud young neck, she clung to him with tender desperation.
“Take me away, oh, my love! Take me away, oh. my dear!” She pressed her face on the lace at his breast, she felt his pounding heart, and the nightingales sang mournfully to the distant lament of the lutes.
“Will you come with me to England?” he asked, and his voice quivered with hope. There was an English village where he was something. His mother, his brothers, his tenantry would stand by him. From English soil he could defy even the King of France himself.
In sighing whispers they made their mad plans, then dragged themselves apart, he to disappear in the darkness, she to return to the slow melody of the pavane which she trod gallantly with the man who was her destined husband and the object of her perfect hate.