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 CHAPTER XX

A GENERAL RENDEZVOUS

Meanwhile Cerise, not the least sleepy, though sent prematurely to bed, dismissed her attendant protesting vehemently, and sat herself down also at an open window, to breathe the night air, look at the moon, and dream, wide-*awake, on such subjects as arise most readily in young ladies' minds when they find themselves alone with their own thoughts in the summer evening. However exalted these may have been, they can scarcely have soared to the actual romance of which she was an unconscious heroine, or foreseen the drama of action and sentiment she was about to witness in person. Little did she imagine, while she leaned a sweet face, pale and serene in the moonlight, on an arm half hidden in the wealth of her unbound hair, that two men were watching every movement who could have kissed the very ground she trod on; for one of whom she was the type of all that seemed best and loveliest in woman, teaching him to look from earth to heaven; for the other, an angel of light, pure and holy in herself, yet luring him irresistibly down the path to hell.

The latter had been hidden since dusk, that he might but see her shadow cross the windows of the gallery, one by one, when she sought her chamber; the other was visiting his guard two hours earlier than usual, with a silent caution that seemed mistrustful of their vigilance, in order that he might offer her the heart of an honest man, ere he fled for his life to take refuge in another land.

Captain George, entering the garden through a private door, could see plainly enough the figure of Mademoiselle de