The child — she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the most — possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that went very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a grace of movement the like of which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before to have beheld assembled in one person.  And her voice too — that musical, silvery voice that had awakened him — possessed in its exquisite modulations an allurement of its own that must have been irresistible, he thought, in the ugliest of her sex.  She wore a hooded mantle of green cloth, and the hood being thrown back, her dainty head was all revealed to him.  There were glints of gold struck by the morning sun from her light nut-brown hair that hung in a cluster of curls about her oval face.  Her complexion was of a delicacy that he could compare only with a rose petal.  He could not at that distance discern the colour of her eyes, but he guessed them blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under the fine, dark line of eyebrows.

He could not have told you why, but he was conscious that it aggrieved him to find her so intimate with this pretty young fellow, who was partly clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman.  He could not guess her station, but the speech that reached him was cultured in tone and word.  He strained to listen.

“I shall know no peace, Leandre, until we are safely wedded,” she was saying.  “Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach.  And yet if we marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and of gaining his consent I almost despair.”

Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who saw through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be dazzled by cheap paste buckles.

“My dear Climene,” the young man was answering her, standing squarely before her, and holding both her hands, “you are wrong to despond.  If I do not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have prepared to win the consent of your unnatural parent, it is because I am loath to rob you of the pleasure of the surprise that is in store.  But place your faith in me, and in that ingenious friend of whom I have spoken, and who should be here at any moment.”

The stilted ass!  Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set and formal manner?  How came so sweet a blossom to waste her perfumes on such a prig?  And what a ridiculous name the creature owned!

Thus Andre-Louis to himself from his observatory.  Meanwhile, she was speaking.

“That is what my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears lest your stratagem should be too late.  I am to marry this horrible Marquis of Sbrufadelli this very day.  He arrives by noon.  He comes to sign the contract — to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli.  Oh!” It was a cry of pain from that tender young heart.  “The very name burns my lips.  If it were mine I could never utter it — never!  The man is so detestable.  Save me, Leandre.  Save me!  You are my only hope.”