CHAPTER III
SINISTER HINTS
SCARCELY had Gabrielle left the terrace before Lucette's wheel stopped and she began to think instead of work. Little frowns and smiles chased each other alternately across her dark expressive face, and here even pearly teeth showed ever and again between the full, mobile lips.
"Has the day's adventure changed everything?" she mused. "He seems to have been very handsome, this gallant cavalier. I wonder. It would be a hard fight. I know how her pride can stand like a fortress; and I know how love can pull and pull and pull. Don't I know it?" and she smiled and sighed in turn. "Poor Gabrielle! What a struggle! Heart whispers, 'I love him'; pride answers, 'My pledge is given.' Ah me! he will have to be a manly man, as she says, if he will win her. But she will have a traitor in the fortress after all, if she really love him. Ah me! I know how it would end with me. But Gabrielle—well, she is Gabrielle."
At that moment a frown chased away the smiles, for Master Dauban, the man she had dubbed a snake, came out from the Maison and approached her.
He was one of those creatures on whom nature sets the outward marks of his inward character. His whole appearance and manner suggested slyness and secretiveness. His light brown shifty eyes were deep set in his sallow face, his cheeks smooth and round, and
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