"I am grateful at having so courteous a jailer," she answered. "This child loves me enough to share my banishment for a time."
"I hope you will consider me your host," he said to Christine, "and not think of me as a jailer. There is no great severity here. I will take you to the rooms which have been prepared for you."
He led the way across the wide hall and up the stairs. At the top he paused, and, opening a door, turned to Lucille.
"Will you wait here for a few moments? Mademoiselle de Liancourt shall first see whether she approves of the arrangements which have been made, and will return to you."
Without a word Christine followed the Viscount along a corridor, and then as they approached the end of it she stopped.
"Is one of my rooms to be that which Maurice used to have?"
"Yes, mademoiselle. The Duke thought you would like to have it."
"The people of Montvilliers have much to learn concerning Duke Roger," said the Viscount. "For once we are ahead of the times in Passey, and love him already."
"Perhaps I shall learn the lesson easily in Passey," Christine answered.
"I hope so, mademoiselle. You will find this room little changed." And the Viscount stood aside to let her enter. He did not follow her in, but, closing the door, walked back along the corridor.
Lighted candles were upon a table at the far end of the room, and a man rose from a deep chair, and came toward her.
Even as she spoke his name, tears of joy and excitement at this sudden and unexpected revelation in her eyes, her thoughts flew to Roger Herrick. She understood the meaning of his parting words now. And as Maurice told her of his slow recovery; his waking to consciousness to find that he was in the hands of his enemies; his refusal to purchase his freedom by accepting their help to regain his kingdom and to hold it as a tributary state; his close confinement in the tower by Larne; the sudden coming of Roger Herrick, and all that he had achieved upon the frontier; Christine began to understand the character of the Duke better.
"And what is the Duke's purpose with regard to you now?" she asked at length.
"I hardly know," Maurice answered. "He would send for me presently to come to Vayenne, he said, but for a little while I was to return to Passey. I was glad to be back in the dear old place, to have my books about me again, but somehow, Christine, they had lost part of their charm for me. The scholar of Passey has changed. Side by side with Roger Herrick I had struck a good blow that day at the clearing in the forest, and after my rescue from the tower at Larne I rode by his side again, fighting, and a different man. I wanted to prove to him that I was a man, and a fighter, something more than a pale student. In his presence I felt all the spirit of my fathers rise in me, bubbling up joyously like water from a newly tapped spring. No one else's opinion counted to me but his. There were few who knew even who I was. I have not been a prominent person in Vayenne."