WHAT GILBERT EXPECTED.
A shiver ran through the watcher as the girl rose from her chair. With
her alabaster hands she pulled out her hairpins one by one while the
wrapper, slipping down upon her shoulders, disclosed her pure and
graceful neck, and her arms, carelessly arched over her head, threw out
the lower curve of the body to the advantage of the exquisite throat,
quivering under the linen.
Gilbert felt a touch of madness and was on the verge of rushing forward,
yelling:
“You are lovely, but you must not be too proud of your beauty since you
owe it to me--it was I saved your life!”
Suddenly a knot in the corset string irritated Andrea who stamped her
foot and rang the bell.
This knell recalled the lover to reason. Nicole had left the door open
so as to run back. She would come.
He wanted to dart out of the house, but the baron had closed the other
doors as he came along. He was forced to take refuge in Nicole’s room.
From there he saw her hurry in to her mistress, assist her to bed and
retire, after a short chat, in which she displayed all the fawning of a
maid who wishes to win her forgiveness for delinquency.
Singing to make her peace of mind be believed, she was going through on
the way to the garden when Gilbert showed himself in a moonbeam.
She was going to scream but taking him for another, she said, conquering
her fright:
“Oh, it is you--what rashness!”
“Yes, it is I--but do not scream any louder for me than the other,” said
Gilbert.
“Why, whatever are you doing here?” she challenged, knowing her
fellow-dependent at Taverney. “But I guess--you are still after my
mistress. But though you love her, she does not care for you.”
“Really?”
“Mind that I do not expose you and have you thrown out,” she said in a
threatening tone.
“One may be thrown out, but it will be Nicole to whom stones are tossed
over the wall.”
“That is nothing to the piece of our mistress’s dress found in your hand
on Louis XV Square, as Master Philip told his father. He does not see
far into the matter yet, but I may help him.”
“Take care, Nicole, or they may learn that the stones thrown over the
wall are wrapped in love-letters.”
“It is not true!” Then recovering her coolness, she added: “It is no
crime to receive a love-letter--not like sneaking in to peep at poor
young mistress in her private room.”
“But it is a crime for a waiting-maid to slip keys under garden doors
and keep tryst with soldiers in the greenhouse!”
“Gilbert, Gilbert!”
“Such is the Nicole Virtue! Now, assert that I am in love with Mdlle.
Andrea and I will say I am in love with my playfellow Nicole and they
will believe that the sooner. Then you will be packed off. Instead of
going to the Trianon Palace with your mistress, and coqueting with the
fine fops around the Dauphiness, you will have to hang around the
barracks to see your lover the corporal of the Guards. A low fall, and
Nicole’s ambition ought to have carried her higher. Nicole, a dangler on
a guardsman!”
And he began to hum a popular song:
“In the French Guards my sweetheart marches!”
“For pity’s sake, Gilbert, do not eye me thus--it alarms me.”
“Open the door and get that swashbuckler out of the way in ten minutes
when I may take my leave.”
Subjugated by his imperious air, Nicole obeyed. When she returned after
dismissing the corporal, her first lover was gone.
Alone in his attic, Gilbert cherished of his recollections solely the
picture of Andrea letting down her fine tresses.