“There is nothing to be ashamed of, mademoiselle.  Every one must have a hero, and I was the only boy you knew.  No one could have misunderstood you; and even to those artificial fops who were standing round you, there seemed nothing strange or unmaidenly in your avowal that when you were a little girl you made a hero of a boy.  You are quite right, I did not make a heroine of you.  Boys, I think, always make heroines of women much older than themselves.  I looked upon you as a dear, bright little girl, whom I would have cared for and protected as I would my favourite dog.  Some boys are given to heroine worship.  I don’t think that is my line.  I am only just getting out of my boyhood now, and I have never had a heroine at all.”

So they sat and chatted, easily and pleasantly, as if four years had been rolled back, and they were boy and girl again in the garden of Windthorpe Chace.

“I suppose I shall see you every evening at the court?” Rupert said.

“I suppose so,” the girl sighed.  “But it will be much more pleasant here.  You will come with papa, won’t you?”

“Whenever he will be good enough to bring me,” Rupert said.

“You remember what I told you about Adele,” the marquis said, as they walked back to their rooms in the palace.

“Surely, sir,” Rupert replied.

“I think it would be as well, both for her sake and your own, that you should not frequent her society in public, Rupert.  His Majesty intends to give her hand to one of the half-dozen of his courtiers who are at present intriguing for it.  Happily, as she is little over sixteen, although marriages here are often made at that age, the question does not press; and I trust that he will not decide for a year, or even longer.  But if you were to be seen much at her side, it might be considered that you were a possible rival, and you might, if the king thought that there was the slightest risk of your interfering with his plans, find yourself shut up in the Bastille, or at Loches, or some other of the fortress dungeons, and Adele might be ordered to give her hand at once to the man he selected for her.

“There is hope in time.  Adele may in time really come to love one of her suitors, and if he were one of those whom the king would like to favour, he would probably consent to the match.  Then, the king may die.  It is treason even to suppose such a thing possible; still he is but mortal; or something else may occur to change the course of the future.

“Of one thing I have decided:  I will not see Adele sacrificed.  I have for the last four years managed to transmit a considerable portion of the revenues of my estates to the hands of a banker in Holland; and if needs be I will again become an exile with her, and wait patiently until some less absolute monarch mounts the throne.”

It was not so easy, however, to silence the mouths of the gossips of Versailles as the Marquis de Pignerolles had hoped.  It was true that Rupert was seldom seen by the side of Adele in the drawing room of the palace, but it was soon noticed that he called regularly every morning with the marquis at Madame de Soissons’, and that, however long the visits of the marquis might be, the young English officer remained until he left.