reason to expect she would hear him, but that she would justly
resent the danger to which he exposed her, by accidents which
might rise from this attempt; all his courage left him, and he
was several times upon the point of resolving to go back again
without showing himself; yet urged by the desire of speaking to
her, and heartened by the hopes which everything he had seen gave
him, he advanced some steps, but in such disorder, that a scarf
he had on entangled in the window, and made a noise. Madam de
Cleves turned about, and whether her fancy was full of him, or
that she stood in a place so directly to the light that she might
know him, she thought it was he, and without the least hesitation
or turning towards the place where he was, she entered the bower
where her women were. On her entering she was in such disorder,
that to conceal it she was forced to say she was ill; she said it
too in order to employ her people about her, and to give the Duke
time to retire. When she had made some reflection, she thought
she had been deceived, and that her fancying she saw Monsieur de
Nemours was only the effect of imagination. She knew he was at
Chambort; she saw no probability of his engaging in so hazardous
an enterprise; she had a desire several times to re-enter the
bower, and to see if there was anybody in the garden. She wished
perhaps as much as she feared to find the Duke de Nemours there;
but at last reason and prudence prevailed over her other
thoughts, and she found it better to continue in the doubt she
was in, than to run the hazard of satisfying herself about it;
she was a long time ere she could resolve to leave a place to
which she thought the Duke was so near, and it was almost
daybreak when she returned to the castle.

The Duke de Nemours stayed in the garden, as long as there was