But Gonzague turned to her with a look so menacing that even her courage
quailed before it. "For your friend's sake, be quiet, Mademoiselle de
Nevers," he said. Taking Flora by the hand, he drew her, partly by main
force and partly by strength of his dominating influence, away from
Gabrielle. Then he turned to his friends. "Ladies and gentlemen," he
said, "our good Æsop desires to speak to the lady of his love in private.
We are all, I am sure, too sympathetic with his amorous ambition to
interfere with his wishes. Let him ply his wooing untroubled. Stand
apart, please, and give Æsop a fair field."
Wondering, laughing, whispering, Gonzague's guests drew back and ranged
themselves against the golden doors, and Gabrielle was left standing
alone in the middle of the room. The hunchback caught up a chair and
carried it to where she stood, making a gesture which requested her to be
seated.
Gabrielle looked at him scornfully. "I have nothing to say to you. I
trust to the justice of France."
The hunchback spoke to her in a low voice, so evenly calculated that
every syllable of what he said was clear to the girl's ears, though no
syllable reached the others: "Do not start; do not show surprise."
Gabrielle had the strength of spirit to control the wonder, the joy, the
hope at the sound of the loved voice thus brought her so suddenly; but
she trembled, and her strength seemed to fail her. She sank into the
chair which the hunchback had offered her. "My God!" she murmured, and
then said no more, but sat with clasped hands and rigid face.
The hunchback spoke again, in the same low, measured tones: "Seem to
listen against your will. A sign may betray us both."
"Henri!" Gabrielle murmured.
The hunchback went on: "Seem as if you were enchanted at my words, by my
gestures. They are watching us."
Now the hunchback walked slowly in a circle round the chair on which
Gabrielle was seated, making as he did so fantastic gestures with his
hands over her head--gestures which suggested to the amazed spectators
some wizard busy with his horrid incantations.