“Nay, Geoffrey Benteen,” she exclaimed, significantly waving her white hand as she noted my swift glance backward, “retire not thus suddenly.  You must be a marvellous woodsman to have attained this place through the watchful cordon of my guards, but ’tis not likely you would so safely run the gantlet of return.  You are not so fair of visage as your gay companion the Chevalier, yet now you are here I will enjoy a short time with you.  Yet first let us understand each other.  For what purpose do you invade my apartment so boldly?”

“I came,” I replied, believing frankness would prove my best play in this crisis, “expecting to find not you, but your prisoner.”

“Ah! you are honest, if not complimentary,” a quick flash of understanding in her bright eyes.  “So it was another woman for whose sake you came creeping recklessly through the night!  God’s mercy!  I even ventured to dream my charms had pierced the dull armor of your cold English heart, yet here you merely stand and laugh at me,—­would even flee my presence as though pestilence were upon my breath.  Why, I wonder? am I not also fair?  Why then flout me thus disdainfully?  Naladi has not been accustomed to such harsh treatment at the hands of your sex.”

“You are, indeed, beautiful both in form and face,” I answered, seeking to avoid quarrel, “but it is not for a mere adventurer of the woods to utter words of love to such as you.”

Her lips curled in sarcastic smile.

“Pish! you grow marvellously modest all at once.  I bid you note that the passion of love cares nothing for a registry of birth—­it looks to flesh and blood, not records.  There is more hidden in your secret heart to-night than finds utterance upon the lips.  You have the soft speech of a diplomat, full of guile and cunning.  Come, I bid you tell me the whole truth.  Do you think me an untutored savage, that you deny me in such disdain?”

“I know not how it may prove regarding your heart,” I said boldly, not hesitating to meet her questioning eyes, “but in manner and graces you exhibit the gloss of courts.”

She smiled mockingly, rising to her feet and saluting me with a low curtsy.

“Ah! very prettily said, senor.  I perceive your objection then:  you think me fairer without than within.  I dare not contend you are altogether wrong in such conjecture.  Faith, why not, senor?  It would be strange otherwise.  All lives do not flow gently amid prosaic routine, and my ship has been often enough upon the rocks.  I have learned reasons of deceit and cruelty in the hard school of experience.  If, in years of trial, I have grown hard of judgment, reckless of action, it is because others have been harsh with me.  Power is naturally tyrannical.  But then what use for us to dwell upon the past?  So you came to-night to meet another?  ’T is strange the risks a man will run for so infinitesimal a reward.  Yet, Mother of God, it gives me a pleasant tale to pour into the ears of him you call De Noyan when we meet again to-morrow.  If I mistake not, the one you seek in secret bears the name of that gay gallant.  At least, she masquerades in this wilderness under the title of Madame de Noyan.  But ’tis you, not he, her reputed husband, forsooth, who seeks her chamber in the midnight.  Truly ’tis a pretty tale of romance.”