"You, Messire!" she exclaimed, "you would..."
"I would do anything to further your wishes, Madonna; this I would have you believe. And a journey to Brussels is such a small matter...."
"As you say," she murmured. For such are the contradictions of a woman"s heart that all of a sudden she did not wish to go away. All thoughts of rebellion and conspiracies were unaccountably thrust into the background of her mind, and ... she did not wish to go away....
"There is no hurry," she continued timidly. "I would not like to put you to inconvenience."
"Oh!" he rejoined airily, "there is no inconvenience which I would not gladly bear in order to gratify your wish."
"I shall have to pack my effects...."
"Jeanne will help Inez, and a few things are easily packed. Your effects shall follow in an ox-wagon; they will be two days on the way; so I pray you take what is required for your immediate needs and is easily stowed in your saddle-bow. We shall have to make an early start, if you desire to be in Brussels by nightfall."
"Oh! there is no hurry," she protested.
"Ah? Then in that case I could escort you as far as Alost, and send a courier thence to your father, to meet you there the next day."
She bit her lip and could have cried with vexation. At the present moment she hated him for so obviously wishing to be rid of her. She had quite forgotten that she had ever wanted to go.
"I shall be too tired to make an early start in the morning," she said quite piteously. "Why it is close on early morning now."
She leaned a little forward in order to listen, for just then the chimes of St. Bavon rang the half-hour after midnight. She still looked a small, pale, slim ghost with one side of her exquisite face in shadow, the other but faintly illumined by the light from without. Her vexation, her indecision, were so plainly expressed in her eyes, that he must indeed have been vastly dull or vastly indifferent not to have read her thoughts. Nevertheless, he said with the same calm airiness as before:
"A few hours" rest will revive you, Madonna. And if we only go as far as Alost to-morrow, we need not start before midday."
At this her pride was aroused. His indifference now amounted to insolence. With a vigorous effort she swallowed her tears, for they were very near the surface, and then she rose abruptly, with the air and manners of a queen, looking down in her turn with haughty indifference on that abominable Netherlander whom she had never hated so thoroughly as she did at this moment.
"I thank you, Messire," she said coldly, "I pray you then to see that all arrangements be complete for my journey as early as may be. I would wish to be in Brussels by nightfall, and half a dozen leagues or so does not frighten me."
She rose with all that stateliness which was a part of herself and suited her tall, graceful figure so admirably; as she did so she gave him a curt nod such as she would have bestowed on a serving man. He too rose to his feet but he made no attempt to detain her. On the contrary, he at once busied himself with his tinder box, and relighted the little lamp. Then he went to the door, unlocked it and held it open for her to pa.s.s through.
As she did so she took the lamp from him, and for one moment their hands met. His were burning hot and hers quite cold--his fingers lingered upon the satiny softness of hers.
But she sailed past him without bestowing another glance upon him, with little head erect and eyes looking straight out before her. In one hand she held the lamp, with the other she was holding up the heavy folds of her trailing gown, her tiny feet in velvet shoes made no sound as she glided across the hall. Soon she was a mere silhouette with the light just playing faintly with the loose curls round her head and touching the lines of her shoulders and arms and one or two folds of her gown.
She mounted the stairs slowly as if she was infinitely weary; Mark watched the graceful, ghostlike form gliding upwards until the gloom had swallowed it up.
Then he turned back into the room.
VII
The first thing that Mark did when he was alone was to close the door; then he struck a light and lit a candle. With it in his hand he went into the withdrawing-room and--having peered closely into the four corners of the room, as if he half-expected to see some night-prowler there--he placed the candle on the table, drew a bunch of keys from the inner pocket of his doublet, and going up to the bureau proceeded to unlock it just as Lenora had done.
He gave one quick glance at the interior of the bureau, then he put up the flap and once more turned the key in the lock.
Having done this he stood for awhile quite still, his chin buried in his hand, his broad shoulders bent, a deep, double furrow between his brows.
From time to time a deep sigh escaped his lips, and his merry grey eyes almost disappeared beneath the heavy frown. Then he seemed to shake himself free from his obsession, he straightened out his tall figure and threw back his head with a movement of pride and of defiance.
He took up the candle and started to go out of the room, but on the threshold he paused again and looked behind him. The table, the chairs, the bureau seemed in a strange weird way to be mocking him--they looked so placid and so immovable--so stolid in the face of the terrible calamity which had just fallen on this house.
And suddenly Mark with a violent gesture threw the heavy candlestick to the ground. The flame flickered as it fell and the taper rolled about gently for a while from side to side until it landed close to his feet.
He smothered a curse and put his heel upon the taper, crushing the wax into a shapeless ma.s.s; then with a curious groan, half of pain half of bitter irony, he pa.s.sed his hand once or twice across his brow.
Slowly the glow of wrath faded from his eyes, a look of wonderful tenderness, coupled with gentle good-humour and kindliness softened the rugged lines of his face. A whimsical smile played round the corners of his lips.
"She must be wooed and she must be won," he murmured. "Mark, you lumbering fool, can you do it? You have less than twenty-four hours in which..."
He sighed again and laughed softly to himself, shaking his head dubiously the while. Then he went out of the room and closed the door softly behind him.
CHAPTER IX
A DIVIDED DUTY
I
Strange and conflicting were the feelings which ran riot through Lenora"s soul when she once more found herself alone in her own room.
Mortification held for a time undisputed sway--a sense of injury--of having gone half-way to meet she knew not what and having been repulsed.
She was quite sure that she hated her husband now, far more bitterly than she had ever hated any one before--at the same time she felt relieved that he at any rate had no part in the treachery which was being hatched under his father"s roof.
One thing, however, gave her an infinite sense of relief. She was going back to her father on the morrow. She would leave this house where she had known nothing but sorrow and humiliation since first she entered it; above all she would never see those people again on whom she had been spying!
Yes! Spying!
There was no other word for it; hideous as it was it expressed what Lenora had done. Oh! there was no sophistry about the girl. She was too proud, too pure to try and palliate what she had done, by shirking to call it by its name. She had done a task which had been imposed on her by her King, her country, and her father. She had sworn to do it--sworn it on the deathbed of the only man who had ever loved her, the only man whose voice and touch had thrilled her, the companion of her childhood, her accepted lover and her kinsman.
She had done it because G.o.d Himself through her father"s and her King"s own mouth had ordered her to do it; and it was not for her--ignorant, unsophisticated, sinful mayhap--to question G.o.d"s decrees. But when she thought back on the events of the past hour, she felt a shudder of horror slowly creeping along her spine.
And she thanked G.o.d that He would allow her to leave this house for ever, and for ever to turn her back on those whom she--so unwillingly--had betrayed.
But she would not allow her mind to dwell on such morbid fancies. There was a great deal to be done ere the morning broke. Her task--if it was to be fruitful--was not completed yet.
She began by taking down a pair of metal candlesticks which stood on a shelf above the hearth and lighting the candles at a small lamp which she had brought up with her. These she placed upon the table; then she went to the press where only a few hours ago Inez had ranged all her clothes and effects, her new gowns and linen. From among these things, she took a flat wallet in which were some sheets of paper, a quill and small inkhorn, also some wax for sealing letters down.
She went to her task slowly and methodically, for she was unaccustomed to writing letters. In the convent they had taught her how to do it, and twice a year she had written to her father--once on New Year"s Day, and once on the feast of San Juan--but the task before her was a far more laborious one than she had ever undertaken with pen and paper.
But she sat down, courageously, to write.
She wrote an account of everything that she had seen, heard and experienced in this house, from the moment when first she left her room in the evening in order to seek companionship, until the moment when, having secured the packet of papers, she had relocked the bureau with her pa.s.s-key and started to go back to her room. What she did not set down in writing was her subsequent meeting with her husband, for that had no connection with the Prince of Orange or with conspiracies, and was merely a humiliating episode in the life of a neglected bride.
The grey dawn slowly creeping in through the leaded gla.s.s of her window still found her at her task. The candles had burned down low in their sockets, their light--of a dim yellow colour--fought feebly against the incoming dawn. But Lenora felt no fatigue.
She wrote in a small, cramped hand and covered four sheets of paper with close writing. When she had finished, she read all that she had written down carefully through, made several corrections in the text and folded the sheets neatly together. Then she took from the bosom of her gown the packet of papers which she had found in the bureau, put it together with her own writing and enclosed everything in a clean sheet of paper carefully folded over. Round this she tied a piece of white ribbon, such as she used for doing up her hair, and sealed it all down with wax.