Her alarm and passion had swept her to the door of the Hotel St. Quentin as a whirlwind sweeps a leaf.  She had come without thought of herself, without pause, without fear.  But now the first heat of her impulse was gone.  Her long tramp had left her faint and weary, and here she had to face not an equery and a page, hers to command, but a great duke, the enemy of her house.  She came blushfully in her peasant dress, shoes dirty from the common road, hair ruffled by the night winds, to show herself for the first time to her lover’s father, opposer of her hopes, thwarter of her marriage.  Proud and shy, she drifted over the door-sill and stood a moment, neither lifting her eyes nor speaking, like a bird whom the least movement would startle into flight.

But Monsieur made none.  He kept as still, as tongue-tied, as she, looking at her as if he could hardly believe her presence real.  Then as the silence prolonged itself, it seemed to frighten her more than the harsh speech she may have feared; with a desperate courage she raised her eyes to his face.

The spell was broken.  Monsieur stepped forward at once to her.

“Mademoiselle, you have come a journey.  You are tired.  Let me give you some refreshment; then will you tell me the story.”

It was an unlucky speech, for she had been on the very point of unburdening herself; but now, without a word, she accepted his escort down the passage.  But as she went, she flung me an imploring glance; I was to come too.  Gilles bolted the door again, and sat down to wait on the staircase; but I, though my lord had not bidden me, followed him and mademoiselle.  It troubled me that she should so dread him—­him, the warmest-hearted of all men.  But if she needed me to give her confidence, here I was.

Monsieur led her into a little square parlour at the end of the passage.  It was just behind the shop, I knew, it smelt so of leather.  It was doubtless the sitting-and eating-room of the saddler’s family.  Monsieur set his candle down on the big table in the middle; then, on second thought, took it up again and lighted two iron sconces on the wall.

“Pray sit, mademoiselle, and rest,” he bade, for she was starting up in nervousness from the chair where he had put her.  “I will return in a moment.”

When he had gone from the room, I said to her, half hesitating, yet eagerly: 

“Mademoiselle, you were never afraid on the way, where there was good cause for fear.  But now there is nothing to dread.”

She rose and fluttered round the walls of the room, looking for something.  I thought it was for a way of escape, but it was not, for she passed the three doors and came back to her place with an air of disappointment, smoothing the loose strands of her hair.

“I never before went anywhere unmasked,” she murmured.