CHAPTER XXXI.

AN ASSIGNATION.

The lock yielded. The door opened. But the walk was bare as far as the fitful moonlight showed. He strode forward almost as if he feared an ambush, though at this part of the garden the short bare trees and standards made but the cover of a spider's-web tracery, through which one sees what is beyond. Only towards the middle of the orchard was there a spot where several walks met, and this was nearly surrounded by evergreen bushes and laurel and holly. This alone loomed blackly in front of him. Towards this he strode. And even as he gained the entrance a tall figure of a woman, cloaked and hooded, emerged from the encompassing dusk, and coming nearer, revealed itself as that of the Archduchess.

Dimly Nigel divined that she wore the deep blue velvet and sable furs which he had seen aforetime. More clearly he distinguished in the depths of the hood the dancing of those lustrous eyes, the pouting red lips of that royal mouth, the pallor of the cheeks.

He took her hand to kiss, but she bent forward with a look of enticement.

"Nay! tall captain!" she said. "We need not use the fashion of the courts. It was not so you kissed Ottilie, or so she told me."

But nevertheless she tendered but her cheek, in token, as he understood it, that she had but surrendered the furthest outworks. That vain imagining of his, that to be within arm's length of her was to throw the reins upon the neck of passion and let it gallop, had vanished when he put the key in the lock.

Woman the queen, woman the giver and the withholder, leaned graciously towards him by reason of the love that had descended upon her, abasing her to him, exalting him to her, banishing all thrusting rebellious swashbuckling imaginations from the presence. Tumultuous his thoughts sprang towards speech, but little could he find but an almost breathless--

"Stephanie! Of all living men to choose me for your lover?"

"Nay! tall captain!" Craftily she had ranged herself beside him and rested her hand upon his shoulder, looking up into his eyes with her face of roguish wooer. "Nay! tall captain! You had already taken my sister-half, Ottilie, by assault, and it is not seeming that an Archduchess should be bussed by more than one bold fellow, so I even proffer my cheek to the same smiter for honour's sake."

The tone of raillery set him at his ease. He felt that beneath it beat the true womanly heart. And over him stole a great, a measureless content.

He took her left hand in his, and holding so much of her closely to his side, they began to walk here and there about the orchard by first one and then another of its many paths.

"It is amazing that I did not guess your riddle before, my love," he said.

"Count Tilly guessed it at Magdeburg!" she said. "But he feigned not to, thinking doubtless it would be as well my madcap freaks should not come to the Emperor through him."

"But you put on a different seeming! The voice was like, but the language of Ottilie was different, smacked of the country lady. The face of Ottilie was like that of the Archduchess, but the manner and bearing were less haughty and less assured."

"But the truth was that you saw me in distant places and in changed circumstances, so that you were prone to think of me as two distinct women."

"And now tell me the meaning of this masquerade! It was for Wallenstein! I am sure of that! You were in love with Wallenstein?"

"Never! You are going to be my first lover and my last!" Her tone was deep and serious. There was something of presage, of mystery, a hint of doom.

"I was taken, as a girl will be, with the glamour that glowed about his name, as he rose from step to step by great leaps of success. It was the star of Wallenstein that I followed. I dreamed of being caught up into its orbit, and, moving, throned above the nations in its company, sharing and contributing to its brightness."

"And Wallenstein? Did he know?"

"Wallenstein knew that I was favouring his party and his plans. He knew that I was willing to run terrible risks, as I have done, to forward his aims. But Wallenstein is a merchant, not a prince, a politician, not a man! The glamour became more transparent as time went on, and when I met you, Nigel, it was as if a wind from the hills swept over the plain, sweeping away the mists of morning and leaving everything clear and visible. For you showed yourself a man. You were not old and full of wiles like Father Lamormain or Maximilian. You were not like a mere courtier, as so many that I have known are, ready to agree to this and that and everything. You withstood me, thwarted me, outplayed me."

"Not always, Stephanie! There was a castle called the Wartburg!"

At this reminiscence the Archduchess flushed beneath her hood, which Nigel did not see. But he felt the sly pinch that accompanied her cry.

"Speak not of it! You took more away with you than you brought!" The hood was turned up towards him now, and he could look down into the depths of those translucent womanly eyes, brimming with the tenderness of first love, more magical than which is nothing of human tenderness.

"And I," said Nigel, "had never loved woman till I saw you in the Pastor's house at Magdeburg. It was as if a bee had stung me. I felt the sharp prick, told myself it was naught. But the poison worked. At Erfurt, when I knew it was you that had wept in the cathedral, and we stood by the bridge looking at the rivers and the stars and heard you speak of love, I recognised the pain again, I knew the longing that had set in, but also, knowing that you spoke not of me, again I brushed the thought aside. But never for long...." Something seemed to come into his mind.... He paused awhile, the Archduchess hanging upon his next words, savouring the essence of what had gone before....

"Who stole my despatches?"

"The same hand that restored them! Speak not of them!"

"I wondered if I had awakened what would have happened!"

"A woman's wit----"

"Would have been little proof against a man's sword-thrust in the dark," said Nigel sternly.

"I will not run such a risk again," she said with humility, "unless it be to save you!"

"Foolish princess!" he rejoined, and held her suddenly in his arms. "You are bewitched! And so am I." This time there was no pretence of offering a cheek. It was a fortunate dark shadow in which they stood, and lips levied toll of lips, and were not satisfied with the rate of customs. Heart beat to heart and beat the more, but Nigel's reverence for her, for all he held her so closely, was as high as her greatness of soul.

"It is enough, tall captain, and yet not enough. But our plans! We have already spent a foolish hour and made no plans."

Her warning tumbled Nigel headlong out of his tower to an ungrateful earth. Plans to what end?

"Oh, Stephanie! My princess! To-morrow or the next day or the next I must set out for Tilly's army. A plan to see you, to hold you, what need I but this key and your sweet graciousness?"

"Once to meet you in my orchard close! Once was easy and possible. But do you think we could meet twice and not be spied upon. I know the palace of Vienna and its ways as you can never know them. Spies of Father Lamormain, hirelings of Maximilian's, hirelings of France and Spain."

"And your love is a great and precious jewel," said Nigel, "too great, too precious to be jeopardised."

"If you would wear it and me forever," ... she murmured, "we must hide it now, peeping at it now and then in secret, till the time is ripe to run the great risk of our lives and proclaim it in the ears of the court and of Europe. Whether it will be a convent or death for me, or death for you and me, for I would die rather than wed Maximilian, or life for both of us, is hidden behind the shadows as the dark encircles us now. But we must not barter our chances for any trifling joy----"

"It is no trifling joy, Stephanie! This, save the mark, is heaven to hold you to my heart."

"Oh! Nigel! Nigel!" she sighed. "Your love is the love of a man that comes and goes in gusts, roaring like the wind, gentle as the breeze, and then it is gone till it awakens again. I say not you are inconstant, but you do not fear, as woman does, the hour of emptiness when there is no lover, no husband."

"By Heaven! I am no inconstant, Stephanie! I can bide my time, and if I lose not my life in these wars, surely there shall be a roof-tree in bonnie Scotland waiting us."

"To-morrow, all being well, the Archduchess shall send for Colonel Charteris to the Long Gallery, but for a brief talk of the affairs of state. The following evening I shall try to meet you here at the same time to say farewell. But remember how we may be beset, and use a double caution. Look for a way into the gardens by another avenue than the palace. Now I leave you! Do not follow! Wait a full half-hour! Make sure you are not spied upon! Make a wide circuit to the orangery and have a glib excuse if you are met. Good-night."

For a brief half-hour Nigel waited, exploring the orchard close. There were two other gates, by one of which the Archduchess had beaten her retreat. No sign of any lurking spy made itself apparent. This time Cæsar's daughter had escaped suspicion, and the lovers had their precious hour of interlude.

Nigel's mind was more at rest after he had made the circuit of the place and sounded every shadow by the aid of the fitful moon. More than ever alive to the privilege of her love, he was equally alive to the danger that she ran. Histories and mysteries of the courts of Italy, of Spain, of France, sprang to life in his mind, things read, or heard in the guard-room, or handed down in fearsome stories of the hearth at home. The fairy princess had been folded in his arms, had breathed kisses of mortal joy upon his lips, had gone. If she were not a fairy princess, then a thousand unknown dangers threatened them. He could guess Maximilian as one very possible architect of evil; only Maximilian was just then preparing to defend Bavaria, and could know nothing if the very wind shouted "Nigel and Stephanie." Father Lamormain was another, nearer home, absolutely inexorable in working out his plans. At present in ignorance of this princely indiscretion he was friendly towards Nigel, but let him gain an inkling and Nigel felt that their projects of happiness would be thwarted by means impossible for himself and her to foresee and to avoid.

As he turned the key in the lock and took one farewell look of that wintry orchard before closing the gate behind him his mind was full of joy; and as the gate closed joy fled before foreboding.