"Let us thank the saints for Mademoiselle's deliverance!" cried the Princess piously.
Cyrène gasped and said nothing, but tears filled her eyes.
"The horror of but touching one of those creatures--those diners in the kitchen!" exclaimed the Canoness.
"Of his daring to approach a lady in marriage!" added Mademoiselle de Richeval.
"Were she one of _my_ blood, he should die," asserted d'Estaing.
An uncanny, silent light passed across the half-shut eyes of Abbé Jude, and gleamed towards one and another of these haughty exclusives as they talked together so regardlessly before the face of him they thought the only plebeian among them. His eye at last met that of Lecour, and he caught a confusion on the Canadian's countenance which he stored away carefully with the words of de Bailleul.
The evening fell, and a faint silver moon rose in the sky and grew brighter and brighter over park and mere. The Princess went in to play cards, followed by the others. Germain and the Baroness walked up and down the terrace alone, talking of the stars and the delightful speculations about them in the book of Fontenelle.
Under the moonlight the girl's fragile beauty wove its fascination deeper over him. He launched himself upon the strange sea of emotions which were more and more crowding upon him.
"Oh, my God!" he thought, "am I walking the celestial gardens? Am I a spirit doomed to banishment? Am I at the same moment both ravished and damned?"
Once when they came to the end of the terrace they leaned on the balustrade and looked down at the water. Glossy dark in the shadows of the old castle which stood in its midst, and in those of the grove on the further side, it glittered tranquilly where the moonshine fell on its surface, and the foliage around it wore a soft, glittering veil. Some mighty witch, some spirit combining Beauty, Power, and the Centuries, seemed to reign over the lake, holding silent court in the peaked and clustered white walls and turrets of the ancient stronghold.
"Mademoiselle," he said very quietly, "_I_ have reason to be silent; but tell me why _you_ are so pensive?"
"I was sad for my friend Hélène. Love must be so sacred."
"Sillon--yes; he had _dared_ to speak to me."
They were silent. It was not he who next spoke. Her clear eyes looked as if into his soul as she said after a long time--