Of love 'tis certain they should talk at first--just a little--as is the case with other lovers when first they meet, and always has been since the world was young and fresh and green, and will be until it is worn out and dead and gone. Therefore, so it was now with Humphrey and Jacquette. And once, nay more than once, perhaps, when they had gotten opposite the great wind-mills on the other side and were shielded from view by the overhanging banks of the river, and hidden by the acacias growing wild on those banks, their young lips met and touched as, sometimes, the petals of one drooping crimson flower will meet and touch those of another. But each knew that they were here for something more serious at this moment than even their love, and gradually they fell to talking on the strange environments with which they, who had but lately been boy and girl together, were now surrounded. They talked of the journey that lay before them over the eternal snows of the St. Bernard or the St. Gothard, of which many travellers had spoken and written and over the former of which Humphrey's father had once himself passed on a voyage to Italy. They wondered, too, how the family of the Duchess would receive her and make a new home for her, and even wondered what the mad Duke would do to regain possession of his errant wife. And then, at last, they spoke of the whisper there was in the air--their air; that air by which they were surrounded; of the whisper that De Beaurepaire meditated some mad stroke by which he would set his life upon a cast and either lose all, including life, in that attempt, or soar still higher than even one of his house had ever soared before. "To-night," said Humphrey, in answer to a question from Jacquette, "I shall know more; perhaps all. If that happens which I think will happen, then I may know enough to prevent the Prince from rushing on his ruin. For, sweet one, I do not believe, nor will I ever believe, that he is aught but a tool, a cat's-paw in the hands of these others. La Truaumont pretends to be his follower, his servitor, yet he is, if I mistake not, the one who leads or pushes him towards the end he himself desires to obtain. While for this woman, who lives so close and snug within her rooms and is seen of none, who is she, what is she?" "I know naught of her, or only that La Truaumont says she secretly, and unknown to him, loves De Beaurepaire." "I understand," her lover answered. "Yet I believe that--that--as with La Truaumont so it is with this woman; she, too, pushes De Beaurepaire onward to something he would never otherwise attempt. And if she is beautiful----" "She _is_ beautiful," Jacquette said. "I saw her in Nancy. Poorly clad 'tis true, with poor adornments----" "She has others now," Humphrey exclaimed, remembering the tray of handsome lace that Emérance's maid carried in her hand when they talked together at the head of the stairs.