The night came down upon the forest, and still they sat, their fingers entwined, on the fallen tree. The flush had faded from the palace windows, leaving them grey and forbidding, and with sun-down a chill wind had come in from the sea. Behind the lovers the pine trunks showed dimly like vast columns in some ghostly cathedral, and there was no sound save the gentle song of the wind in the branches.
Armand drew the rug they had brought with them closer over both their shoulders, shielding the little head that nestled so confidingly on his breast. When Edward returned with Anna Paluda, the Princess Galva awoke.
The duke rose and stretched his cramped limbs. Edward reached for his hand and shook it.
The particular genius who designed the grounds of the Palace at Corbo was a nephew of the Estratos--a youth of an artistic but somewhat weak intellect and bizarre tastes.
This was in the latter part of the seventeenth century, a period when a wave of decadence had swept over the Court, a time of powder and patches and red-heeled shoes--of mincing courtiers and doubtful gallantries.
Large, level lawns, and flower-bordered walks lay immediately beneath the terrace which ran the length of the building at the back, and beyond and at the sides, the royal horticulturist, with an eye, doubtless, to the doings of the times, had devised cunning shrubberies and fascinating little arbours, the narrow paths twisting here and winding there, a very maze of foliage, paths which had doubtless hampered the movements of many an outraged husband.
Here and there a weather-beaten, moss-patched statue or terminal peeped above the greenery, a nymph with broken features, or a faun, the leer still lingering on his discoloured face. One could imagine him again pricking his goat ears to catch an echo of the sounds he had listened to in those quiet retreats in the days that were gone--the whispered vows, the crunch of high-heeled shoes on the gravel--the oaths and the clash of rapiers.
But Edward's party had more important affairs to hold their attention than the imagining of long-dead romances. They had found without difficulty the entrance into the grounds, and now were making a cautious way over the weed-grown paths.