I have no leisure for your riddles. You want my consent to this marriage?"
"If you please; and I hope you will bear Gilbert no ill will."
"What is it to me whether he loves you or not? You burden me, miss."
"I daresay," said Nicole, bursting out in anger at last; "you have said the same thing to Gilbert."
"I speak to your Gilbert! You are mad, girl; leave me in peace."
"If you do not speak to him now, I believe the silence will not last long."
"Lord forgive her – the silly jade is jealous!" exclaimed Andrea, covering her with a disdainful look, and laughing. "Cheer up, little Legay! I never looked at your pretty Gilbert, and I do not so much as know the color of his eyes."
Andrea was quite ready to overlook what seemed folly and not pertness; but Nicole felt offended, and did not want pardon.
"I can quite believe that – for one cannot get a good look in the nighttime."
"Take care to make yourself clear at once," said Andrea, very pale.
"Last night, I saw – "
"Andrea!" came a voice from below, in the garden.
"My lord your father," said Nicole, "with the stranger who passed the night here."
"Go down, and say that I cannot answer, as I am not well. I have a stiff neck; and return to finish this odd debate."
Nicole obeyed, as Andrea was always obeyed when commanding, without reply or wavering. Her mistress felt something unusual; though resolved not to show herself, she was constrained to go to the window left open by Legay, through a superior and resistless power.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HARBINGER
The traveler had risen early to look to his coach and learn how Althotas was faring.
All were still sleeping but Gilbert, who peeped through a window of his room over the doorway and spied all the stranger's movements.
The latter was struck by the change which day brought on the scene so gloomy overnight. The domain of Taverney did not lack dignity or grace. The old house resembled a cavern which nature embellishes with flowers, creepers and capricious rookeries, although at night it would daunt a traveler seeking shelter.
When Balsamo returned after an hour's stroll to the Red Castle ruins, he saw the lord of it all leave the house by a side door to cull roses and crush snails. His slender person was wrapped in his flowered dressing-gown.
"My lord," said Balsamo, with the more courtesy as he had been sounding his host's poverty, "allow my excuses with my respects. I ought to wait your coming down, but the aspect of Taverney tempted me, and I yearned to view the imposing ruins and pretty garden."
"The ruins are rather fine," returned the baron; "about all here worth looking at. The castle was my ancestors'; it is called the Red Castle, and we long have borne its name together with Taverney, it being the same barony. Oh, my lord, as you are a magician," continued the nobleman, "you ought with a wave of your wand uprear again the old Red Castle, as well as restore the two thousand odd acres around it. But I suppose you wanted all your art to make that beastly bed comfortable. It is my son's, and he growled enough at it."
"I protest it is excellent, and I want to prove it by doing you some service in return."
Labrie was bringing to his master a glass of spring water on a splendid china platter.
"Here's your chance," said the baron, always jeering; "turn that into wine as the greatest service of all."
Balsamo smiling, the old lord thought it was backing out and took the glass, swallowing the contents at a gulp.
"Excellent specific," said the mesmerist. "Water is the noblest of the elements, baron. Nothing resists it; it pierces stone now, and one of these days will dissolve diamonds."
"It is dissolving me. Will you drink with me. It has the advantage over wine of running freely here. Not like my liquor."
"I might make one useful to you."
"Labrie, a glass of water for the baron. How can the water which I drink daily comprise properties never suspected by me? As the fellow in the play talked prose all his life without knowing it, have I been practising magic for ten years without an idea of it?"
"I do not know about your lordship, but I do know about myself," was the other's grave reply.
Taking the glass from Labrie, who had displayed marvelous celerity, he looked at it steadily.
"What do you see in it, my dear guest?" the baron continued to mock. "I am dying with eagerness. Come, come! a windfall to me, another Red Castle to set me on my legs again."
"I see the advice here to prepare for a visit. A personage of high distinction is coming, self-invited, conducted by your son Philip, who is even now near us."
"My dear lord, my son is on military duty at Strasburg, and he will not be bringing guests at the risk of being punished as a deserter."
"He is none the less bringing a lady, a mighty dame – and, by the way, you had better keep that pretty Abigail of yours at a distance while she stays, as there is a close likeness between them."
"The promised lady guest bears a likeness to my servant Legay? What contradiction!"
"Why not? Once I bought a slave so like Cleopatra that the Romans talked of palming her off for the genuine queen in the triumph in their capital."
"So you are at your old tricks again?" laughed the baron.
"How would you like it, were you a princess, for instance, to see behind your chair a maid who looked your picture, in short petticoats and linen neckerchief."
"Well, we will protect her against that. But I am very pleased with this boy of mine who brings guests without forewarning us!"
"I am glad my forecast affords you pleasure, my dear baron; and, if you meant to properly greet the coming guest, you have not a minute to lose."
The baron shook his head like the most incredulous of beings, and as the two were near the dwelling part of the baron's daughter, he called out to her to impart the stranger's predictions.
This was the call which brought her to the window despite herself, and she saw Balsamo. He bowed deeply to her while fixing his eyes upon her. She reeled and had to catch the sill not to fall.
"Good-morning, my lord," she answered.
She uttered these words at the very moment when Nicole, telling the baron that his daughter would not come, stopped stupefied and with gaping mouth at this capricious contradiction.
Instantly Andrea fell on a chair, all her powers quitting her. Balsamo had gazed on her to the last.
"This is deusedly hard to believe," remarked the baron, "and seeing is believing – "
"Then, see!" said the wonder-worker, pointing up the avenue, from the end of which came galloping at full speed a rider whose steed made the stones rattle under its hoofs.
"Oh,
