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She needed a playmate, and I was the only one available. Sometimes she would come and spend a day at Saint-Graal. Do you know Granjolaye? The castle? It's worth going over. It used to belong to the Kings of Navarre, you know. We used to play together in the great audience chamber, and chase each other through the secret passages in the walls. At Saint-Graal we confined ourselves to the garden.
Paul's grandmother, the Comtesse de Louvance, was his next neighbour. Paul remembered him vaguely as a tall, drab, mild-mannered man, with a receding chin, and a soft, rather piping voice, who used to tip him, and have him over a good deal to stay at Granjolaye. On the death of Madame de Louvance, the property of Saint-Graal had passed to her son, Edmond, André's feu Monsieur le Comte.
"When I'm big I'm going back to Saint-Graal; and if her father won't let me really marry her, because I'm a bourgeois, then we'll just go on making believe we're married." She laughed. 'And now you are big, and you've come back to Saint-Graal, and your lady-love is at Granjolaye. Why don't you call on her and offer to redeem your promise? 'Why doesn't she send for me bid me to an audience?
News travels fast and penetrates everywhere in that lost corner of garrulous Gascony. The news that Paul had taken up his residence at Saint-Graal could scarcely fail to reach the Queen. Would she remember their childish intimacy? Would she make him a sign? Would she let him see her, for old sake's sake? Oh, in all probability, no. Most certainly, no.
'Oh, non pas, she hastened to protest. 'But you're the new owner of Saint-Graal. Everybody of the country knows, of course, that the new owner of Saint-Graal, Mr. Warringwood, is English. 'Ah, then she's of the country, was Paul's mental note. 'And I thought all Englishmen were horsemen, she went on. 'Oh, there are a few bright exceptions there's a little scattered remnant.
André, in his awful best cassock, was waiting on the terrace. It was on the terrace that Paul had ordered luncheon to be served. The terrace at Saint-Graal is a very jolly place. It stretches the whole length of the southern façade of the house, and is generously broad.
And I'm conveniently at hand. 'If you could see yourself, you'd understand that the influence of places is superfluous. If you could look into my heart you'd recognise that my emotion is scarcely a ghost. 'There's one thing I should like to see, she said. 'I should very much like to look into your garden at Saint-Graal. 'Would you? he cried eagerly. 'When will you come? 'Whenever you like?
My days are spent in wondering who you are. She laughed. 'You must have a care, or you'll be typical, she warned him. 'I never said I wasn't human, he called after her, as she cantered away. 'If you have, for once in a way rumour has told the truth. I lived at Saint-Graal till I was thirteen. 'Then perhaps you knew her? 'Her? 'The Queen. Mademoiselle de la Granjolaye de Ravanches.
On that first morning, the first after his arrival at Saint-Graal, and the first, also, of the many on which they encountered each other in the forest, he was bent upon a sentimental pilgrimage to Granjolaye. He was partly obeying, partly seeking, an emotion.
'I wonder if I shall meet her again as I go home. She would very likely be returning the way she had gone. But, though he loitered, he did not meet her again. He met nobody. It was, in some measure, the attraction of that lonely forest lane, that one almost never did meet anybody in it. At Saint-Graal André was waiting to lunch with him.
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