Through a vast crowd of ladies and of gentlemen in wigs and scarlet coats, with, for the former, flowered dresses and hoops and panniers and Heaven knows what, I passed, looking right and left for where the Prince might be. Then, suddenly, on a little daïs I saw him seated with, for companion by his side, Damaris, or rather Ana, Princess of Carbajal; and he was bending over her, talking with what our beloved friends call empressement, and it seemed to me as though he were utterly oblivious of every other person there.
But, since I stood at the foot of the daïs waiting to attract his attention and then pay my respects to him, I observed that she—my confederate—or rather she whose confederate I was—gave a slight start, and into her face there came a lovely, heavenly tinge of red, while from between her parted lips I heard the whispered word "Adrian." Also I saw her left hand, which lay along her dress, clutch a fold or so of that dress as though in agitation extreme.
And the Prince heard the word too, since, after a momentary glance at her, he cast his eyes in my direction and then again bent them on the girl.
"Monseigneur," she said, "it is the gentleman for whom I demanded an invitation."
"Ha!" he said, rising and bowing somewhat stiffly to me I thought. "Ha! a gentleman named Adrian."
"Nay," she replied; "a gentleman, an English nobleman, called Lord Trent."
"I ask a thousand pardons," he said, bending low before her. "I thought you uttered the name Adrian." Then he turned to me, saying coldly, "My lord, you are welcome," after which he turned away and began talking to his companion again, whereon I sought the garden as she had bid me do.
"Was she acting?" I asked myself, as I passed through the windows to the gardens beyond, to find and take up my station by the fountain in which was the statue of Hercules killing the Hydra; "was she acting when she whispered my name and when she made that slight but perceptible clutch at her dress?" As for the tinge of red, I doubted if she could act that, since, so far as I knew, it was not to be accomplished—no! not even by La Gautier, whom I had seen often enough in the past at the Odéon. Still, I remembered she was a good actress—had she not impersonated a wandering singing-girl from Provence when I first knew her; and had she not deceived even so astute a beast as Marcieu, the spy who tried to arrest her! So I could not answer the question, but went on down the allées, and past stone fauns and satyrs, and gentlemen in togas and ladies in—well! not in gowns made by court furnishers—and, at last, in the centre of a great rond, covered with crushed shells and tiny pebbles that hurt the feet, I came upon the fountain and the figure of Hercules. Then, being there, I sat me down on the high stone rim of the basin, into which the water was falling from the hydra heads with a vastly cool and pleasing splash, and waited, beneath the moon, which sailed clear and cloudless in the skies, for the dénouement. That, however, was a little while in coming, and though more than one couple passed me, the vizard-masked face of the cavalier being almost invariably bent down over the upturned vizard-masked face of the accompanying dame (so that one might well guess it was the eternal romance being whispered in willing ears), she for whom I waited did not herself appear.
Not for a little while, as I have said—yet, at last.
Down one of the little pleached alleys I heard the rustle of a woman's robe, and saw the long, lithe figure that I knew so well—that I had never forgotten since I first saw it in the spangled dress of the mountebank she pretended to be. I saw, too, the moonbeams glint upon the lovely face, and recognised it instantly, though she, too, wore her vizard-mask. Then she was close to me, close to where I had stepped out on to the shell-strewn path, and calling "Adrian"—somewhat loudly, as I thought—while she drew near.