But François was not the only one of them who walked that day with a distinguished person. In the late afternoon, although the day had grown dark and a brown fog was creeping up from the river and the low-lying meadows, Diane went for the walk which she religiously consecrated to her complexion. She took her way past the Bishop’s palace through the best quarter of the town, indulging herself in dreams of the time when she would be the mistress of a mansion like the big stone houses, with gardens in front, in which the aristocracy of Bienville resided. Presently she came to the gates of the park, which she entered. It was so quiet and so deserted by the nursemaids and the children, because of the damp and the fog, that Diane could think uninterruptedly of the Marquis. The great clumps of evergreen shrubbery loomed large in the dimness of the fog, and the bare trees were lost in the mist. Diane entered a little heart-shaped maze of cedars, cut flat, and towering high over her head on each side. Here indeed was solitude; not a sound from the near-by town broke the silence, and the darkness, which was not the darkness of night, was like that of another world. She threaded the winding paths quickly and presently found herself in the heart of the maze, and sat down on an iron bench. Then, to shut out the world more completely, that she might think only of the Marquis, she put up her muff to her eyes.
As she sat lost in a delicious reverie, she felt two strong hands taking her own two hands and removing them gently from her face. It was the Marquis, who was so close to her that even in the pearly mist she could distinguish his face. Never had he looked so handsome to Diane. His military cap was set jauntily over his laughing eyes, and his trim, soldierly figure, with his cavalry cloak hanging over one shoulder, was grace itself.
Having taken her hands from her face, the Marquis laid his mustache on Diane’s red lips in a long and clinging kiss, and then sat down beside her, drawing her trembling and palpitating close to him. It was like a bird in the snare of the fowler.
“I saw you and followed you,” he said after a while. “You cannot escape me; but why are you so cruel to me?”