"O kind sir! O monsieur!" I heard the girl answer. "Oh! please, sir, don't kill me, and don't wake the Princess. Oh! what are you doing in her garden at this hour?"
"Who is Isidore?" the masked one asked sternly.
"O kind sir, he is the coachman. We are to be married soon, and we make a little tryst at night when it is fine above. O sir, if the Princess should wake?"
"Wake! How should she be asleep? Is she not entertaining some Englishman to supper to-night?"
"Ah, monsieur! Ah, _mon Dieu_! You believe that! 'Tis a cold supper then! Look, monsieur, at the _salle-a-manger_."
"Ah! monsieur, would you believe that of the Princess! And all because she played a little jest upon a foolish Englishman who pesters her with his attentions, a poor half-witted thing, who even now, at this moment, is dilly-dallying at the side-door, thinking he will be let in. _Peste!_ he will wait a long while," and she began to sing a song out of Regnard's new comedy about a man waiting for a lady under an elm, and waiting a mighty long time too--
"Attendez-moi sous l'orme," she sang, "vous m'attendrez longtemps."
"A little jest," the cloaked and masked man said, turning round to his companion; "a little jest. And the animal is by the side-door. Is this the truth?" re-turning his face towards the girl.
"Ah! monsieur. The truth! How can it be aught else--when--when the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria honours her with his admiration."
"Come," the man said to his companion now. "Come. We, too, will go round to the side-door and see this ardent lover--and, perhaps, punish his insolence. These English are insupportable. As for you--go to your Isidore, your coachman."
"Oh! _non, monsieur, non!_ He will not come now. There will be no Isidore to-night. He is timorous. If he has seen monsieur, he will have shrunk away."
"Go then to your bed, and stay in it; and, above all, say nothing to the Princess of our being in this garden to-night."
"For certain, monsieur, otherwise I should have to say I was here too. Good-night, monsieur." Then, as the man turned to move away, she suddenly stopped him by catching the end of his cloak, and, thereby, forcing him to turn; he saying somewhat haughtily, "What is it, good woman? What?"