a silken gown along the
shadowy walks, or the glint of a stray moonbeam on a silver sword. He
strolled about, scarcely knowing whither, guided by the sound of
splashing water, and coming upon many a beautiful spot in his solitary
ramble, among them that famous Bosquet de la Reine where the
scoundrelly, frightened Rohan had sworn the Queen had stooped to him. He
passed by the place, all unconscious of its unhappy history, and so on
down a broad pathway toward the tapis vert.

As he walked slowly along, charmed with the beauty of the scene around
him, and smiling now and again to think that fortune should have placed
him in the midst of such unaccustomed splendors, he suddenly heard the
sounds of a lute near him, fingered in tentative accord, and an instant
later he recognized St. Aulaire's voice.

"'Twas written for you, Madame, and 'tis called 'Le Pays du Tendre,'" he
said, still fingering the strings. "I would wander in the land with
you, Madame." Suddenly he begins to sing softly, and, in the silence and
perfume of the summer night, his hushed voice sounded like a caress:

Land of the madrigal and ode,
Of rainbow air and cloudless weather,
Tell me what ferny, elfin road
Will lead my eager footsteps thither.

Tricked out with gems shall I go hither?
Or in a carriage a la mode,
Land of the madrigal and ode,
Of rainbow air and cloudless weather?

Or in the garb by Love bestow'd?
With roses crown'd and sprigs of heather,
With mandolin and dart enbow'd
Shall Cupid and I go together--
Land of the madrigal and ode,
Of rainbow air and cloudless weather?

As the last tinkling notes of the lute died away, Calvert was about to
go, but he was suddenly startled by hearing a faint scream. Turning
quickly and noiselessly in the direction from which the sound seemed to
have come, he found himself in an instant in a thick and beautiful
bosquet. A double row of ilex-trees, inside of which ran a colonnade of
white marble, completely encircled and shut in a cleared space, in the
centre of which bubbled a fountain. Into this secluded spot the moon,
high in the heavens, shone with unclouded radiance, so that he saw, as
clearly as though 'twere noonday, Madame de St. Andre standing at the
edge of the basin, her lips white and parted in fear, one hand pressed
against her throat, the other held roughly in the grasp of Monsieur de
St. Aulaire, who knelt before her, his lute fallen at his side. The rose
w