initial commit of ebook 38910HEADmain

1 files changed, 13794 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/38910-8.txt b/38910-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cacbdca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38910-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13794 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abbess Of Vlaye, by Stanley J. Weyman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Abbess Of Vlaye
+
+Author: Stanley J. Weyman
+
+Release Date: February 17, 2012 [EBook #38910]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABBESS OF VLAYE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by
+Google Books (Harvard College Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://books.google.com/books?id=8tYMAAAAYAAJ
+
+   2.  The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE ABBESS OF VLAYE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         By STANLEY J. WEYMAN
+
+                              *   *   *
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF. A Romance. With Frontispiece and Vignette.
+Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+THE STORY OF FRANCIS CLUDDE. A Romance. With four Illustrations. Crown
+8vo, $1.25.
+
+A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE. Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne, Sieur de
+Marsac. With Frontispiece and Vignette. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+UNDER THE RED ROBE. With twelve full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
+cloth, $1.25.
+
+MY LADY ROTHA. A Romance of the Thirty Years' War. With eight
+Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF A MINISTER OF FRANCE. With thirty-six
+Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+THE MAN IN BLACK. With twelve Illustrations. Crown 8vo, $1.00.
+
+SHREWSBURY. A Romance. With twenty-four Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
+$1.50.
+
+THE RED COCKADE. A Novel. With forty-eight Illustrations by R. Caton
+Woodville. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+THE CASTLE INN. A Novel. With six full-page Illustrations by Walter
+Appleton Clark. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+SOPHIA. A Romance. With twelve full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
+$1.50.
+
+COUNT HANNIBAL. A Romance of the Court of France. With Frontispiece.
+Crown 8vo $1.50.
+
+IN KINGS' BYWAYS. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+                              *   *   *
+
+                  New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "HE HAD DISMOUNTED, AND HAD HIS HAT IN HIS HAND"]
+                                                    [_Page_ 113]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE ABBESS
+                               OF VLAYE
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                          STANLEY J. WEYMAN
+
+      _Author of "Under the Red Robe," "A Gentleman of France,"
+              "My Lady Rotha," "The Red Cockade," "Count
+                  Hannibal," "The Castle Inn," etc_.
+
+
+
+
+
+                       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+                   91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+                          LONDON AND BOMBAY
+                                 1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Copyright, 1903, by
+                          STANLEY J. WEYMAN.
+
+                              *   *   *
+
+                         Copyright, 1904, by
+                          STANLEY J. WEYMAN.
+
+                              *   *   *
+
+                        _All rights reserved_.
+
+
+
+
+
+                 ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+
+                         HUGH STOWELL SCOTT,
+
+          IN REMEMBRANCE OF LONG SUMMER DAYS SPENT WITH HIM
+
+                 AMID THE SCENES WHICH SUGGESTED IT,
+
+                            THIS STORY IS
+
+               AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY HIS FRIEND.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS.
+
+
+   CHAP.
+
+            INTRODUCTION--A King in Council.
+
+         I. Villeneuve-l'Abbesse.
+
+        II. The Tower Chamber.
+
+       III. Still Waters Troubled.
+
+        IV. The Dilemma.
+
+         V. The Captain of Vlaye.
+
+        VI. In the Hay-field.
+
+       VII. A Soldiers' Frolic.
+
+      VIII. Father Angel.
+
+        IX. Speedy Justice.
+
+         X. Midnight Alarms.
+
+        XI. The Chapel by the Ford.
+
+       XII. The Peasants' Camp.
+
+      XIII. Hostages.
+
+       XIV. Saint and Sinner.
+
+        XV. Fears.
+
+       XVI. To Do or Not to Do?
+
+      XVII. The Heart of Cain.
+
+     XVIII. Two in the Mill.
+
+       XIX. The Captain of Vlaye's Condition.
+
+        XX. The Abbess Moves.
+
+       XXI. The Castle Of Vlaye.
+
+      XXII. A Night by the River.
+
+     XXIII. The Bride's Dot.
+
+      XXIV. Fors l'Amour.
+
+       XXV. His Last Ride.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE ABBESS OF VLAYE.
+
+
+
+
+                            INTRODUCTION.
+
+                          A KING IN COUNCIL.
+
+
+Monsieur des Ageaux was a man of whom his best friends could not say
+that he shone, or tried to shine, in the pursuit of the fair sex. He
+was of an age, something over thirty, when experience renders more
+formidable the remaining charms of youth; and former conquests whet
+the sword for new emprises. And the time in which he lived and
+governed the province of Périgord for the King was a time in which the
+favour of ladies, and the good things to be gained thereby, stood for
+much, and morality for little. So that for the ambitious the path of
+dalliance presented almost as many chances of advancement as the more
+strenuous road of war.
+
+Yet des Ageaux, though he was an ambitious man and one whose appetite
+success--and in his degree he had been very successful--had but
+sharpened, showed no inclination to take that path, or to rise by
+trifling. Nay, he turned from it; he shunned if he did not dislike the
+other sex. Whether he doubted his powers--he was a taciturn, grave
+man--or he had energy only for the one pursuit he loved, the
+government of men, the thing was certain. Yet he was not unpopular
+even at Court, the lax Court of Henry the Fourth. But he was known for
+a thoughtful, dry man, older than his years and no favourite with
+great ladies; of whom some dubbed him shy, and some a clown, and
+all--a piece of furniture.
+
+None the less, where men were concerned, he passed for a man more
+useful than most; or, for certain, seeing that he boasted no great
+claims, and belonged to no great family, he had not been Governor of a
+province. Governors of provinces in those days were of the highest;
+cousins of the King, when these could be trusted, which was rare;
+peers and Marshals of France, great Dukes with vast hereditary
+possessions, old landed Vicomtes, and the like. Only at the tail of
+the list came some half-dozen men whom discretion and service, or the
+playfulness of fortune had--_mirabile dictum_--raised to office. And
+at the tail of all came des Ageaux; for Périgord, his province, land
+of the pie and the goose liver, was part of the King's demesne, the
+King was his own Governor in it, and des Ageaux bore only the title of
+"Lieutenant for the King in the country of Périgord."
+
+Yet was it a wonderful post for such a man, and many a personage, many
+a lord well seen at Court, coveted it. All the same the burden was
+heavy; a thing not to be dismissed in a moment. The King found him no
+money, or little; no men, or few. Where greater Governors used their
+own resources he had to use--economy. And to make matters worse the
+man was just; it was part of his nature, it was part of his passion,
+to be just. So where they taxed not legally only, but illegally, he
+scrupled, he held his hand. And, therefore, though his dignity was
+almost as high as office could make it, and his power in his own
+country not small, no man who ever came to Court went with less
+splendour in the streets of Paris, or with a smaller following.
+Doubtless, as a result of this, a few despised him; a few even, making
+common cause with the Court ladies, and being themselves semi-royal,
+and above retort, flouted him as a thing negligible.
+
+But, on the whole, he passed, though dry and grave, for a man to be
+envied, the ladies notwithstanding. And he held his own tolerably, and
+his post handsomely until a certain day in the summer of 1595, when
+word came to the young Governor to cross half France to meet the King
+at Lyons; where, in the early part of that year, Henry the Fourth lay,
+and was ill-content with a world which, on the surface, seemed to be
+treating him well.
+
+But on the surface only. The long wars of religion, midway in which
+the Massacre of Bartholomew stands up, like some drear gibbet landmark
+in a waste, were, indeed, virtually over. Not only had Henry come to
+the throne, but Paris, his capital, was his at last; had he not bought
+it eighteen months before by that mass, that abjuration of Protestant
+errors, of which the world has heard so much? And not Paris only.
+Orleans and Bourges, and this good city of Lyons, and Rouen, all were
+his now, and in their Notre-Dames or St.-Etiennes had sung their _Te
+Deums_, and more or less heartily cried "God save the King!" At last,
+after six years of fighting, of wild horse forays, that flamed across
+the Northern corn-lands, after a thousand sleepless nights and as many
+days of buying and bartering--at last the lover of Gabrielle, who was
+also the most patient and astute of men, was King of France and of
+Navarre, lord of all this pleasant realm.
+
+Or, not lord; only over-lord, as six times a day they made him know.
+Nor even that, of all. For in Brittany a great noble still went his
+own way. And in Provence a great city refused to surrender. And
+north-eastwards Spain still clung to his border. Nevertheless it was
+none of these things filled Henry, the King, with discontent. It was
+at none of these things that he swore in his beard as he sulked at the
+end of the long Council Table this June morning; while des Ageaux,
+from his seat near the bottom of the board, watched his face.
+
+In truth Henry was discovering, that, having bought, he must pay; that
+so great was the mortgage he had put on his kingdom, the profits
+belonged to others. Overlord he was--lord, no; except perhaps in Lyons
+where he lay, and where for that reason the Governor had to mind his
+manners. But in smiling Provence to south of him? Not a whit. The Duke
+of Epernon ruled the land of Roses, and would rule until the young
+Duke of Guise, to whom His Majesty had given commission, put him out;
+and then Guise would rule. In Dauphiny the same. In Languedoc, the
+great middle province of the south, Montmorency, son to the old
+Constable, was King in fact; in Guienne old Marshal Matignon. In
+Angoumois--here Epernon again; so firmly fixed that he deigned only to
+rule by quarterly letters from his distant home. True in Poitou was an
+obedient Governor, but the house of Trémouille from their red castle
+of Thouars outweighed his governorship. And in rocky Limousin the
+Governor could keep neither the King's peace nor his own.
+
+So it was everywhere through the wide provinces of France; and Henry,
+who loved his people, knew it, and sulkily fingered the papers that
+told of it. Not that he had need of the papers. He knew before he cast
+eye on them in what a welter of lawlessness and disorder, of private
+feud and public poverty, thirty years of civil war had left his
+kingdom. One province was in arms, torn asunder by a feud between two
+great houses. Another laboured in the throes of a peasant rising, its
+hills alight night after night with the flames of burning farmsteads.
+A third was helpless in the grip of a gang of brigands, who held the
+roads. A fourth was beset by disbanded soldiers. The long wars of
+religion had dissolved all ties. Everywhere monks who had left their
+abbeys and nuns who had left their convents swarmed on the roads, with
+sturdy beggars, homeless peasants, broken gentry. Everywhere, beyond
+the walls of the great cities, the law was paralysed, the great
+committed outrage, the poor suffered wrong, the excesses of war
+enured, and, in this time of fancied peace, took grimmer shape.
+
+He whom God had set over France, to rule it, knew these things and sat
+hopeless, brooding over the papers; hampered on the one side by lack
+of money, on the other by the grants of power that in evil days had
+bought a nominal allegiance. He began to see that he had won only the
+first bout of a match which must last him his life. Nor would it have
+consoled him much to know that in the college of Navarre that day
+played a little lad, just ten years old, whose frail white hand would
+one day right these things with a vengeance.
+
+His people cried to him, and he longed to help them and could not.
+From a thousand market-places, splayed wooden shelters, covering each
+its quarter-acre of ground, their cry came up to him: "Give us peace,
+give us law!" and he could not. No wonder that he brooded over the
+papers, while the clerks looked askance at him, and the great lords
+who had won what he had lost whispered or played tric-trac at the
+board. Those who sat lower, and among these M. des Ageaux, were less
+at their ease. They wondered where the storm would break, and feared
+each for his own head.
+
+Presently M. de Joyeuse, one of the great nobles, precipitated the
+outburst. "You have heard," said he, twiddling a pen between his
+delicate fingers, "what they call these peasants who are ravaging
+Poitou, sire?"
+
+Before the King could answer the Governor of Poitou protested from his
+place lower down the table. "They are none of mine," he said. "It is
+in the Limousin next door to me that they are at work. I wash my hands
+of them!"
+
+"They are as bad on your side as on mine!" he of the barren Limousin
+retorted.
+
+"They started with you!" Poitou rejoined. "Who kindles a fire should
+put it out."
+
+The King raised his hand for silence. "No matter who is responsible,
+the fact remains!" he said.
+
+"But you have not heard the jest, sire," Joyeuse struck in. His thin
+handsome face, pale with excess, belied eyes thoughtful and dreamy,
+eyes that saw visions. He had been a King's favourite, he had spent
+years in a convent, he had come forth again, now he was head of the
+great Joyeuse house, lord of a third of Languedoc. By turns "Father
+Angel"--for he had been a noted preacher--and Monseigneur, there were
+those who predicted that he would some day return to the cloister and
+die in his hood. "They call them the Tards-Avisés," he continued,
+"because they were foolish enough to rise when the war was over."
+
+"God pity them!" the King said.
+
+"_Morbleu!_ Your Majesty is pitiful of a sudden!" The speaker was the
+Constable de Montmorency. He was a stout, gruff, choleric man, born,
+as the Montmorencys were, a generation too late.
+
+"I pity them!" the King answered a trifle sharply. "But you"--he spoke
+to the table--"neither pity them nor put them down."
+
+"You are speaking, sire," one asked, "of the Crocans?" It was so; from
+the name of a village in their midst, they called these revolted
+peasants of the Limousin of whom more will be said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"They are not in my government," the speaker replied. "Nor in mine!"
+
+"Nor mine!" And so all, except the Governor of the Limousin and the
+Governor of Poitou, who sat sulkily silent.
+
+Another of the great ones, Marshal Matignon, nodded approval. "Let
+every man shoe his own ass," he said, pursing up his lips. He was a
+white-haired, red-faced, apoplectic man of sixty, who thought that in
+persuading the Estates of Bordeaux to acknowledge Henry he had earned
+the right to go his own way. "Otherwise we shall jostle one another,"
+he continued, "and be at blows before we know it, sire! They are in
+the Limousin; let the Governor put them down. It is his business and
+no other's."
+
+"Except mine," the King replied, with a frown of displeasure. "And if
+he cannot, what then?"
+
+"Let him make way, sire, for one who can," the Constable answered
+readily. "Your Majesty will not have far to look for him," he
+continued in a playful tone. "My nephew, for instance, would like a
+government."
+
+"A truce to jesting," Henry said. "The trouble began, it is true,
+in the Limousin, but it has spread into Poitou and into the
+Angoumois"--he looked at Epernon's agent, for the Duke of Epernon was
+so great a man he had not come himself. "Gentlemen," the King
+continued, sitting back in his great chair, "can you not come to some
+agreement? Can you not mass what force you have, and deal with them
+shortly but mercifully? The longer the fire burns, the more trouble
+will it be to extinguish it, and the greater the suffering."
+
+"Why not let it burn out, sire?" Epernon's agent muttered with thinly
+veiled impudence. "It will then burn the more rubbish, with your
+Majesty's leave!"
+
+But, the words said, he quailed. For, under his aquiline nose, the
+King's mustaches curled with rage. There were some with whom he must
+bear, lords who had brought him rich cities, wide provinces; and
+others whose deeds won them licence. But this man? "There spoke the
+hireling!" he cried. And the stroke went home, for the man was the
+only one at the table who had no government of his own. "I will spare
+your attendance, sir," the King continued, with a scornful gesture.
+"M. de Guise will answer such questions as arise on your master's late
+government--of Provence. And for his other government----"
+
+"I represent him there also," the man muttered sulkily.
+
+"Then you can represent his absence," Henry retorted with quick wit,
+"since he is never there! I need you not. Go, sir, and see that within
+three hours you are without the walls of Lyons!"
+
+The man rose, divided between fear of the King and fear of the master
+to whom he must return. He paused an instant, then went down the room
+slowly, and went out.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," Henry continued, with hard looks, "understand. You
+may shoe each his own ass, but you must shoe mine also. There must be
+an end put to this peasant rising. Who will undertake it?"
+
+"The man who should undertake it," Matignon answered, "for the ass is
+of his providing, is the gentleman who has gone out."
+
+"He is naught!"
+
+"He is for much in this."
+
+"How? Sometimes," the King continued irritably, "I think the men are
+shod, and the asses come to my Council Table!"
+
+This was a stroke of wit on a level with the Constable's discernment;
+he laughed loudly. "Nevertheless," he said, "Matignon's right, sire.
+That man's master is for a good deal in this. If he had kept order his
+neighbour's house would not be on fire."
+
+For the first time M. des Ageaux ventured a word from the lower end of
+the table. "Vlaye!" he muttered.
+
+The Constable leaned forward to see who spoke. "Ay, you've hit on it,
+my lad, whoever you are. Vlaye it is!" And he looked at Matignon, who
+nodded his adhesion.
+
+Henry frowned. "I am coming to the matter of Vlaye," he said.
+
+"It is all one, sire," Matignon replied, his eyes half shut. He
+wheezed a little in his speech.
+
+"How?"
+
+The Constable explained. He leant forward and prodded the table with a
+short, stout finger--not overclean according to the ideas of a later
+time. "Angoumois is there," he said. "See, your Majesty. And Poitou is
+here"--with a second prod an inch from the first. "And the Limousin is
+here! And Périgord is there! And see, your Majesty, where their skirts
+all meet in this corner--or as good as meet--is Vlaye! Name of God, a
+strong place, that!" He turned for assent to old Matignon, who nodded
+silently.
+
+"And you mean to say that Vlaye----"
+
+"Has been over heavy handed, your Majesty. And the clowns, beginning
+to find the thing beyond a joke, began by hanging three poor devils of
+toll gatherers, and the thing started. And what is on everybody's
+frontier is nobody's business."
+
+"Except mine," the King muttered drily. "And Vlaye is Epernon's man?"
+
+"That is it, sire," the Constable answered. "Epernon put him in the
+castle six years back for standing by him when the Angoulême people
+rose on him. But the man is no Vlaye, you understand. M. de Vlaye was
+in that business and died of his wounds. He had no near heirs, and the
+man whom Epernon put in took the lordship as well as the castle, the
+name and all belonging to it. They call him the Captain of Vlaye in
+those parts."
+
+The King looked his astonishment.
+
+"Oh, I could give you twenty cases!" the Constable continued,
+shrugging his shoulders. "What do you expect, sire, in such times as
+these?"
+
+"Ventre St. Gris!" Henry swore. "And not content with what he has got,
+he robs the poor?"
+
+"And the rich, too," Joyeuse murmured with a grin, "when he gets them
+into his net!"
+
+Henry looked sternly from one to another. "But what do you while this
+goes on?" he said. "For shame! You, Constable? You, Matignon?" He
+turned from one to the other.
+
+Matignon laughed wheezily. "Make me Governor in Epernon's place,
+sire," he said, "and I will account for him. But double work and
+single pay? No, no!"
+
+The Constable laughed as at a great joke. "I say the same, sire," he
+said. "While Epernon has the Angoumois it is his affair."
+
+The King looked stormily at the Governor of Poitou. But Poitou shook
+his head. "It is not in my government," he said moodily. "I cannot
+afford, sire, to get a hornets' nest about my ears for nothing."
+
+He of the Limousin fidgeted. "I say the same, sire," he muttered.
+"Vlaye has three hundred spears. It would need an army to reduce him.
+And I have neither men nor money for the task."
+
+"There you have, sire," the delicate-faced Joyeuse cried gaily, "three
+hundred and one good reasons why the Limousin leaves the man alone.
+For the matter of that"--he tried to spin his pen like a top--"there
+is a government as deeply concerned in this as any that has been
+named."
+
+"Which?" Henry asked. He was losing patience. That which was so much
+to him was nothing to these.
+
+"Périgord," Joyeuse answered with a bow. And at that several laughed
+softly--but not the King. He was himself, as has been said, Governor
+of Périgord.
+
+Here at last, however, was one on whom he could vent his displeasure;
+and he would vent it! "Stand up, des Ageaux!" he cried harshly. And he
+scowled as des Ageaux, who was somewhat like him in feature, rose from
+his seat. "What have you to say, man?" Henry cried. "For yourself and
+for me! Speak, sir!" But before des Ageaux could answer, the King
+broke out anew--with abuse, with reproaches, giving his passion rein;
+while the great Governors listened and licked their lips, or winked at
+one another, when the King hit them a side blow. Presently, when des
+Ageaux would have defended himself, alleging that he was no deeper in
+fault than others,
+
+"Ventre St. Gris! No words, sir!" Henry retorted. "I find kings enough
+here, I want not you in the number! I made not you that I might have
+your nobility cast in my teeth! You are not of the blood royal, nor
+even," leaning a little on the word, "Joyeuse or Epernon! Man, I made
+you! And not for show, I have enough of that--but to be of use and
+service, for common needs and not for parade--like the gentleman,"
+bitterly, "who deigns to represent me in the Limousin, or he who is so
+good as to sign papers for me in Poitou! Man alive, it might be
+thought you were peer and marshal, from your way of idling here, while
+robbers ride your marches, and my peasants are driven to revolt. Go
+to, do you think you are one of these?" He indicated by a gesture the
+great lords who sat nearest him. "Do you think that because I made
+you, I cannot unmake you?"
+
+The man on whom the storm had fallen bore it not ignobly. It has been
+said that he featured Henry himself, being prominent of nose, with a
+grave face, a brown beard, close-cropped, and a forehead high and
+severe. Only in his eyes shone, and that rarely, a gleam of humour.
+Now the sweat stood on his brow as he listened--they were cruel blows,
+the position a cruel one. Nevertheless, when the King paused, and he
+had room to answer, his voice was steady.
+
+"I claim, sire," he said, "no immunity. Neither that, nor aught but
+the right of a soldier, who has fought for France----"
+
+"And gallantly!" struck in one, who had not yet spoken--Lesdiguières,
+the Huguenot, the famous Governor of Dauphiny. He turned to the King.
+"I vouch for it, sire," he continued. "And M. de Joyeuse, who has the
+better right, will vouch for it, too."
+
+But Joyeuse, who was sulkily prodding the table with his spoiled pen,
+neither lifted his eyes nor gave heed. He was bitterly offended by the
+junction of his name with that of Epernon, who, great and powerful as
+he was, had had a notary for his father. He was silent.
+
+Des Ageaux, who had looked at him as hoping something, lifted his
+eyes. "Your Majesty will do me the justice to remember," he said,
+"that I had your order to have a special care of my province; and to
+mass what force I could in Périgueux. Few men as I have----"
+
+"You build them up within walls!" Henry retorted.
+
+"But if I lost Périgueux----"
+
+The King snarled.
+
+"Or aught happened there?"
+
+"You would lose your head!" Henry returned. He was thoroughly out of
+temper. "By the Lord," he continued, "have I no man in my service?
+Must I take this fellow of Vlaye into hire because I have no honest
+man with the courage of a mouse! You call yourself Lieutenant of
+Périgord, and this happens on your border. I have a mind to break you,
+sir!"
+
+Henry seldom let his anger have vent; and the man who stood before him
+knew his danger. From a poor gentleman of Brittany with something of
+pedigree but little of estate, he had risen to this post which eight
+out of ten at that table grudged him. He saw it slipping away; nay,
+falling from him--falling! A moment might decide his fate.
+
+In the pinch his eyes sought Joyeuse, and the appeal in them was not
+to be mistaken. But the elegant sulked, and would not see. It was
+clear that, for him, des Ageaux might sink. For himself, the
+Lieutenant doubted if words would help him, and they might aggravate
+the King's temper. He was bravely silent.
+
+It was Lesdiguières, the Huguenot, who came to the rescue. "Your
+Majesty is a little hard on M. des Ageaux," he said. And the King's
+lieutenant in Périgord knew why men loved the King's Governor in
+Dauphiny.
+
+"In his place," Henry answered wrathfully, "I would pull down Vlaye if
+I did it with my teeth. It is easy for you, my friend, to talk," he
+continued, addressing the Huguenot leader. "They are not your peasants
+whom this rogue of a Vlaye presses, nor your hamlets he burns. I have
+it all here--here!" he repeated, his eyes kindling as he slapped with
+his open hand one of the papers before him, "and the things he has
+done make my blood boil! I swear if I were not King I would turn
+Crocan myself! But these things are little thought of by others.
+M. d'Epernon supports this man, and"--with a sudden glance at
+Matignon--"the Governor of Guienne makes use of his horses when he
+travels to see the King."
+
+Matignon laughed something shamefacedly. "Well, sire, the horses have
+done no harm," he said. "Nor he in my government. He knows better. And
+things are upside down thereabouts."
+
+"It is for us to right them!" Henry retorted. And then to des Ageaux,
+but with less temper. "Now, sir, I lay my order on you! I give you six
+weeks to rid me of this man, Vlaye. Fail, and I put in your place a
+man who will do it. You understand, Lieutenant? Then do not fail. By
+the Lord, I know not where I shall be bearded next!"
+
+He turned then, but still muttering angrily, to other business.
+Matignon and the Constable were not concerned in this; and as soon as
+the King's shoulder was towards them they winked at one another. "Your
+nephew will not have long to wait," Matignon whispered, "if a
+lieutenancy will suit him."
+
+"'Twould be a fair start," the Constable answered. "But a watched
+pot--you know the saying."
+
+"This pot will boil at the end of six weeks," Matignon rejoined with a
+fat chuckle. "Chut, man, with his wage a year in arrear, and naught
+behind his wage, where is he to find another fifty men, let alone
+three or four hundred? He will need five and twenty score for this,
+and he dare not move a man!"
+
+"He might squeeze his country?" the Constable objected.
+
+"Pooh! He is a fool of the new school! He will go back to his cabbages
+before he will do that! I tell you," he continued, laying his hand on
+the other's knee, "he has got Périgord, the main part of it, into
+order! Ay, into order! And if he don't go, we shall have to mend our
+manners," with a grin, "and get our governments into order, too!"
+
+"By the Lord, there is no finger wags in my country unless I will it!"
+the Constable rejoined with some tartness. "Since he"--he indicated
+Joyeuse--"came over to us, at any rate! Don't think it! But there
+it is. If there were no whifflesnaffles here and there, and no
+blood-letting, it would not suit us very well, would it? You don't
+want to go to cabbage planting, Marshal, more than I do?"
+
+The Marshal smiled.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+Late that night the young Duke of Joyeuse, leaving his people at the
+end of the street, went by himself to the house in which des Ageaux
+lodged in Lyons. A woman answered his summons, and not knowing the
+young grandee--for he was cloaked to the nose--fetched the Bat, an
+old, lean, lank-visaged captain who played squire of the body to des
+Ageaux. The Bat knew the Duke in spite of his cloak; perhaps he had
+him for a certain reason in his mind. And he bowed his long, stiff
+back before him, and would have fetched lights; yet with a glum face.
+But the Duke answered him shortly that he wanted no more than a word
+with his master, and would say it there.
+
+On which, "You are too late, my lord," the Bat rejoined; and Joyeuse
+saw that with all his politeness he was as gloomy as his name. "He
+left Lyons this afternoon."
+
+"With what attendance?" the Duke asked in great surprise. For he had
+not heard of it.
+
+"Alone, my lord Duke."
+
+"Does he return to-morrow?"
+
+"I know not."
+
+"But you know something!" the young noble retorted with more of
+vexation than the circumstances seemed to justify.
+
+"My lord, nothing," the Bat answered, "save that we are ordered to
+follow him to-morrow by way of Clermont."
+
+"To his province?"
+
+"Even so, my lord."
+
+Joyeuse struck his booted foot against the pavement, and the sombre
+Bat, whose ears--some said he got his name from them--were almost as
+long as his legs, caught the genial chink of gold crowns. It was such
+music as he seldom heard, for he had a vision of a heavy bag of them;
+and his eyes glistened.
+
+But the chink was all he had of them. Joyeuse turned away, and with a
+stifled sigh and a shrug went back to the play-table at the
+Archbishop's palace. Sinning and repenting were the two occupations in
+which he had spent one half of his short life; and if there was a
+thing which he did with greater ardour than the first--it was the
+second.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                        VILLENEUVE-L'ABBESSE.
+
+
+The horse looked piteously at the man. Blood oozed from its broken
+knees and its legs quivered under it. The man holding his scratched
+and abraded hand to his mouth returned the beast's look, at first with
+promise of punishment, but by and by less unkindly. He was a just man,
+and he saw that the fault was his; since it was he who, after crossing
+the ridge, had urged the horse out of the path that he might be spared
+some part of the weary descent. Out of the path, and cunningly hidden
+by a tuft of rough grass, a rabbit-hole had lain in wait.
+
+He contented himself with a word of disgust, therefore, chucked the
+rein impatiently--since justice has its limits--and began to lead the
+horse down the descent, which a short sward rendered slippery. But he
+had not gone many paces before he halted. The horse's painful limp and
+the sweat that broke out on its shoulders indicated that two broken
+knees were not the worst of the damage. The man let the rein go,
+resigned himself to the position, and, shrugging his shoulders,
+scanned the scene before him.
+
+The accident had happened on the south side of the long swell of chalk
+hills which the traveller had been mounting for an hour past; and
+scarcely a stone's-throw below the ruined wind-mill that had been his
+landmark for leagues. To right and left of him, under a pale-blue sky,
+the breezy, open down, carpeted with wild thyme and vetches, and alive
+with the hum of bees, stretched in long soft undulations, marred by no
+sign of man save a second and a third wind-mill ranged in line on the
+highest breasts. Below him the slope of sward and fern, broken here by
+a solitary blackthorn, there by a clump of whin and briars, swept
+gently down to a shallow wide valley--almost a plain--green and
+thickly wooded, beyond which the landscape rose again slowly and
+imperceptibly into uplands. Through this wide valley flowed from left
+to right a silvery river, its meandering course marked by the lighter
+foliage of willows and poplars; and immediately below the traveller a
+cluster of roofless hovels on the bank seemed to mark a ford.
+
+On all the hill about him, on the slopes of thyme, and heather, and
+yellow gorse, the low sun was shining--from his right, and from a
+little behind him, so that his shadow stretched far across the sward.
+But in the valley about the river and the ford evening was beginning
+to fall, grey, peaceful, silent. For a time his eyes roved hither and
+thither, seeking a halting-place of more promise than the ruined cots;
+and at length they found what they sought. He marked, rising from a
+mass of trees a little beyond the ford, a thin curl of smoke, so
+light, so grey, as to be undiscoverable by any but the sharpest
+eyes--but his were of the sharpest. The outline of the woods at the
+same point indicated a clearing within a wide loop of the river; and
+putting the one with the other, des Ageaux--for it was he--came to a
+fair certainty that a house of some magnitude lay hidden there.
+
+At any rate he saw no better chance of shelter. It was that of the
+ruined hovels and the roadside, and taking the rein once more, he led
+the horse down the hill, and in the first dusk of the evening crossed
+the pale clear water on stepping-stones. He suffered the horse to
+stand awhile in the stream and drink and cool its legs amid the dark,
+waving masses of weed. Then he urged it up the bank, and led it along
+the track, that was fast growing dim, and grey, and lonesome.
+
+The horse moved painfully, knuckling over at every step. Yet night had
+not quite fallen when the traveller, plodding along beside it, saw two
+stone pillars standing gaunt and phantom-like on the left of the path.
+Each bore aloft a carved escutcheon, and in that weird half-light and
+with a backing of dark forest trees the two might have been taken for
+ghosts. Their purpose, however, was plain, for they flanked the
+opening, at right angles to his path, of a rough road, at the end of
+which, at a distance of some ten score paces from the pillars,
+appeared an open gateway framed in a dim wall. No more than that, for
+above was the pale sky, and on either hand the black line of trees
+hedged the narrow picture.
+
+The traveller peered awhile at the escutcheons. But gathering darkness
+and the lichens which covered the stone foiled him, and he was little
+the wiser when he turned down the avenue. When he had traversed a half
+of its length the trees fell back on either hand, and revealed the
+sullen length of a courtyard wall, and rising within it, a little on
+his right, a dark mass of building, compact in the main of two round
+towers, of the date of Philip Augustus, with some additions of more
+modern times. The effect of the pile, viewed in that half-light, was
+gloomy if not forbidding; but the open gateway, the sled-marks that
+led to it, and the wisps of hay which strewed the road, no less than
+the broken yoke that hung in the old elm beside the entrance--all
+these, which the Lieutenant's eyes were quick to discern, seemed to
+offer a more homely and more simple welcome.
+
+A silent welcome, nevertheless, borne on the scent of new-mown,
+half-gathered hay; a scent which des Ageaux was destined to associate
+ever after with this beginning of an episode, and with his entrance in
+the gloaming, amid quiet things. Slowly he passed under the gateway,
+leading the halting horse. Fallen hay, swept from the cart by the brow
+of the arch, deadened his footfalls, and before he was discovered he
+was able to appreciate the enclosure, half courtyard, half fold-yard,
+sloping downward from the house and shut in on the other sides by a
+tile-roofed wall. At the lower end on his left were stalls, and sheds,
+and stables, and a vague, mysterious huddle of ploughs and gear, and
+feeding beasts, and farm refuse. Between this mass--to which the night
+began to lend strange forms--and the great, towered house which loomed
+black against the sky, lay the slope of the court, broken midway by
+the walled marge of a swell something Italian in fashion, and speaking
+of more prosperous days. On this there sat, as the traveller saw, two
+figures.
+
+And then one only. For as he looked, uncertain whether to betake
+himself first to the stables of the house, one of the two figures
+sprang from the wall-edge, and came bounding to him with hands
+upraised, flying skirts, a sharp cry of warning.
+
+"Oh, take care, Charles!" it cried. "Go back before M. le Vicomte
+comes!"
+
+Then, at six paces from him, she knew him for a stranger, and the last
+word fell scarcely breathed from her lips; while he, knowing her for a
+girl, and young by her voice, uncovered. "I seek only a night's
+shelter," he said stiffly. "Pardon me, mademoiselle, the alarm I fear
+I have caused you. My horse slipped on the hill, and is unable to
+travel farther."
+
+She stood staring at him in astonishment, and until her companion at
+the well came forward made no reply. Something in the movements of
+this second figure as it crossed the court struck the eye as abnormal,
+but it was only when it came quite close that the stranger discovered
+that the lad before him was slightly hump-backed.
+
+"You have met with a mischance," the youth said with awkward
+diffidence.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Whatever the cause, you are welcome. Go, Bonne," the young man
+continued, addressing the girl, "it is better you went--and tell my
+father that a gentleman is here craving shelter. When I have stabled
+his horse I will bring him in. This way, if you please!" the lad
+continued, turning to lead the way to the stables, but casting from
+moment to moment timid looks at his guest. "The place is rough, but
+such as it is, it is at your service. Have you ridden far to-day, if
+it please you?"
+
+"From Rochechouart."
+
+"It is well we had not closed the gates," the youth answered shyly;
+"we close them an hour after sunset by rule. But to-day the men have
+been making hay, and we sup late."
+
+The stranger expressed his obligation, and, following his guide, led
+his horse through one of the doors of a long range of stabling built
+against the western wall of the courtyard. Within all was dark, and he
+waited while his companion fetched a lanthorn. The light, when it
+came, disclosed a sad show of empty mangers, broken racks, and roof
+beams hung with cobwebs. Rain and sunshine, it was evident, entered
+through more holes than one, and round the men's heads a couple of
+bats, startled by the lanthorn-light, flitted noiselessly to and fro.
+
+At the farther end of the place, the roof above three or four stalls
+showed signs of recent repair; and here the young man invited his
+guest to place his beast.
+
+"But I shall be turning out your horses," the stranger objected.
+
+The youth laughed a little awry. "There's but my father's gelding," he
+said, "and old Panza the pony. And they are in the ox-stable where
+they have company. This," he added, pointing to the roof, "was made
+good for my sister the Abbess's horses."
+
+The guest nodded, and, after examining his beast's injuries, bathed
+its knees with fresh water; then producing a bandage from his
+saddle-bag he soaked it in the water and skilfully wound it round the
+strained fetlock. The lad held the lanthorn, envy, mingled with
+admiration, growing in his eyes as he watched the other's skilled
+hands and method.
+
+"You are well used to horses?" he said.
+
+"Tolerably," des Ageaux answered, looking up. "Are not you?" For in
+those days it was an essential part of a gentleman's education.
+
+The lad sighed. "Not to horses of this sort," he said, shrugging his
+shoulders. And des Ageaux took note of the sigh and the words, but
+said nothing. Instead he removed his sword and pistols from his
+saddle, and would have taken up his bags also, but the young man
+interposed and took possession of them. A moment and the two were
+crossing the darkened courtyard. The light of the lanthorn made it
+difficult to see aught beyond the circle of its rays, but the stranger
+noticed that the château consisted half of a steep-roofed house, and
+half of the two round towers he had seen; house and towers standing in
+one long line. Two rickety wooden bridges led across a moat to two
+doors, the one set in the inner of the two towers--probably this was
+the ancient entrance--the other in the more modern part.
+
+On the bridge leading to the latter two serving-men with lights were
+awaiting them. The nearer domestic advanced, bowing. "M. le Vicomte
+will descend if"--and then, after a pause, speaking more stiffly, "M.
+le Vicomte has not yet heard whom he has the honour of entertaining."
+
+"I have no pretensions to put him to the trouble of descending," the
+traveller answered politely. "Say if you please that a gentleman of
+Brittany seeks shelter for the night, and would fain pay his respects
+to M. le Vicomte at his convenience."
+
+The servant bowed, and turning with ceremony, led the way into a bare,
+dimly-lit hall open to its steep oaken roof, and not measurably more
+comfortable or less draughty than the stable. Here and there dusty
+blazonings looked down out of the darkness, or rusty weapons left
+solitary in racks too large for them gave back gleams of light. In the
+middle of the stone floor a trestle table such as might have borne the
+weight of huge sirloins and great bustards, and feasted two score
+men-at-arms in the days of the great Francis, supported a litter of
+shabby odds and ends; old black-jacks jostling riding-spurs, and a
+leaping-pole lying hard by a drenching-horn. An open door on the tower
+side of the hall presented the one point of warmth in the apartment,
+for through it entered a stream of ruddy light and an odour that
+announced where the kitchen lay.
+
+But if this were the dining-hall? If the guest felt alarm on this
+point he was soon reassured. The servant conducted him up a short
+flight of six steps which rose in one corner. The hall, in truth, huge
+as it seemed in its dreary emptiness, was but one half of the original
+hall. The leftward half had been partitioned off and converted into
+two storeys--the lower story raised a little from the ground for the
+sake of dryness--of more modern chambers. More modern; but if that
+into which the guest was ushered, a square room not unhandsome in its
+proportions, stood for sample, scarcely more cheerful. The hangings on
+the walls were of old Sarazinois, but worn and faded to the colour of
+dust. Carpets of leather covered the floor, but they were in holes and
+of a like hue; while the square stools clad in velvet and gilt-nailed,
+which stood against the walls, were threadbare of stuff and tarnished
+of nails. In winter, warmed by the ruddy blaze of a generous fire,
+and well sconced, and filled with pleasant company seated about a
+well-spread board, the room might have passed muster and even conduced
+to ease. But as the dusky frame of a table, lighted by four poor
+candles--that strove in vain with the vast obscurity--and set with no
+great, store of provision, it wore an air of meagreness not a whit
+removed from poverty.
+
+The man who stood beside the table in the light of the candles, and
+formed the life of the picture, blended well with the furnishings. He
+was tall and thin, with stooping shoulders and a high-nosed face, that
+in youth had been masterful and now was peevish and weary. He wore a
+sword and much faded lace, and on the appearance of his guest moved
+forward a pace and halted, with the precision and stiffness of
+clockwork. "I have the honour," he began, "to welcome, I believe----"
+
+"A gentleman of Brittany," des Ageaux answered, bowing low. It by no
+means suited his plans to be recognised. "And one, M. le Vicomte, who
+respectfully craves a night's hospitality."
+
+"Which the château of Villeneuve-l'Abbesse," the Vicomte replied with
+grandeur, "has often granted to the greatest, nor"--he waved his hand
+with formal grace--"ever refused to the meanest. They have attended, I
+trust," he continued with the air of one who, at the head of a great
+household, knows, none the less, how to think for his guests, "to your
+people, sir?"
+
+"Alas, M. le Vicomte," des Ageaux answered, a faint twinkle in his
+eyes belying the humility of his tone, "I have none; I am travelling
+alone."
+
+"Alone?" The Vicomte repeated the word in a tone of wonder. "You have
+no servants with you--at all?"
+
+"Alas--no."
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+Des Ageaux shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his hands. "In these
+days, M. le Vicomte, yes."
+
+The Vicomte seemed by the droop of his shoulders to admit the plea;
+perhaps because the other's eyes strayed involuntarily to the shabby
+furniture. He shook his head gloomily. "Since Coutras----" he began,
+and then, considering that he was unbending too soon, he broke off.
+"You met with some accident, I believe, sir?" he said. "But first, I
+did not catch your name?"
+
+"Des Voeux," the Lieutenant answered, adopting on the spur of the
+moment one somewhat like his own. "My horse fell and cut its knees on
+the hill about a mile beyond the ford. I much fear it has also
+strained a fetlock."
+
+"It will not be fit to travel to-morrow, I doubt?"
+
+The guest spread out his hands, intimating that time and the morrow
+must take care of themselves; or that it was no use to fight against
+fate.
+
+"I must lend you something from the stables, then," the Vicomte
+answered; as if at least a score of horses stood at rack and manger in
+his stalls. "But I am forgetting your own needs, sir. Circumstances
+have thrown my household out of gear, and we sup late tonight. But we
+shall not need to wait long."
+
+He had barely spoken when the two serving-men who had met the
+Lieutenant on the bridge entered, one behind the other, bearing with
+some pomp of circumstance a couple of dishes. They set these on the
+board, and withdrawing--not without leaving behind them a pleasant
+scent of new-mown hay--returned quickly bearing two more. Then falling
+back they announced by the mouth of the least meagre that my lord was
+served.
+
+The meal which they announced, though home-grown and of the plainest,
+was sufficient, and des Ageaux, on the Vicomte's invitation, took his
+seat upon a stool at a nicely regulated distance below his host. As he
+did so the girl he had seen in the courtyard glided in by a side door
+and silently took her seat on the farther side of the table.
+Apparently the Vicomte thought his guest below the honour of an
+introduction, for he said nothing. And the girl only acknowledged the
+Lieutenant's respectful salutation by a bow.
+
+The four candles shed a feeble light on the table, and left the
+greater part of the room in darkness. Des Ageaux could not see the
+girl well, and he got little more than an impression of a figure
+moderately tall and somewhat plump, and of a gentle, downcast face.
+Form and face owned, certainly, the charm of youth and freshness. But
+to eyes versed in the brilliance of a Court and the magnificence of
+_grandes dames_ they lacked the more striking characteristics of
+beauty.
+
+He gave her a thought, however, pondering while he gave ear to the
+Vicomte's querulous condescensions how so gentle a creature--for her
+gentleness and placidity struck him--came of so stiff and peevish a
+father. But that was all. Or it might have been all if as the thought
+passed through his mind his host had not abruptly changed the
+conversation and disclosed another side of his character.
+
+"Where is Roger?" he asked, addressing the girl with sharpness.
+
+"I do not know, sir," she murmured.
+
+A retort seemed hovering on the Vicomte's lips, when the youth who had
+taken the guest to the stable, and had stayed without, perhaps to make
+some change in his rustic clothes, entered and slid timidly into his
+place beside his sister. He hoped, probably, to pass unseen, but the
+Vicomte, his great high nose twitching, fixed him with his eyes and
+pointed inexorably at him, with a spoon held delicately between thumb
+and finger. "You would not think," he said with grim abruptness, "that
+that--that, M. des Voeux, was son of mine?"
+
+Des Ageaux started. "I fear," he said hastily, "that it was I, sir,
+who made him late. He was good enough to receive me."
+
+"I can only assure you," the Vicomte replied with cruel wit, "that
+whoever made him late, it was not I who made him--as he is! The
+Villeneuves, till his day, I'd have you know, sir, have been straight
+and tall, and men of their hands, as ready with a blow as a word! Men
+to make their way in the world. But you see him! You see him! Can
+you," he continued, his eyes half-closed, dwelling on the lad, whose
+suffering was evident, "at Court? Or courting? Or stepping a
+_pavanne?_ Or----"
+
+"Father!"
+
+The word burst from the girl's lips, drawn from her by sheer pain. The
+Vicomte turned to her with icy courtesy. "You spoke, I think?" he said
+in a tone which rebuked her for the freedom on which she had ventured.
+"Just so. I was forgetting. We live so quietly here, we use so little
+ceremony with one another, that even I forget at times that family
+matters are not interesting to a stranger. Were my elder daughter
+here, M. des--ah, des Voeux, yes--my daughter the Abbess, who knows
+the world, and has some tincture of manners, and is not taken commonly
+for a waiting-woman, she would be able to entertain you better. But
+you see what we are. For," with a smirk, "it were rude not to include
+myself with my family."
+
+No wonder, the guest thought, as he listened, full of pity--no wonder
+the lad had spoken timidly and shyly, if this were the daily treatment
+he received! If poverty, working on pride, had brought the last of a
+great family to this--to repaying on the innocents who shared his
+decay the slings and arrows of unkind fortune! The girl's exclamation,
+wrung from her by her brother's suffering, had gone to the
+Lieutenant's heart, though that heart was not of the softest. He would
+have given something to silence the bitter old tyrant. But experience
+told him that he might make matters worse. He was no knight-errant, no
+rescuer of dames; and, after all, the Vicomte was their father. So
+while he hesitated, seeking in vain a safe subject, the sharp tongue
+was at work again.
+
+"I would like you to see my elder daughter," the Vicomte resumed with
+treacherous blandness. "She has neither a ploughboy's figure, nor,"
+slowly, "a dairymaid's speech. Her manners are quite like those of the
+world. She might go anywhere, even to Court, where she has been,
+without rendering herself the subject of ridicule and contempt. It is
+truly unfortunate for us"--with a bow--"that you cannot see her."
+
+"She is not at home?" the Lieutenant said for the sake of saying
+something. He was full of pity for the girl whose face, now red, now
+pale, betrayed how she suffered under the discipline.
+
+"She does not live at home," the Vicomte answered. And then--with
+curious inconsistency he now hid and now declared his poverty--"We
+have not much left of which we can be proud," he continued, "since the
+battle of Coutras seven years back took from the late King's friends
+all they had. But the Abbey of Vlaye is still our appanage. My elder
+daughter is the Abbess."
+
+"It lies, I think, near Vlaye?"
+
+"Yes, some half-league from Vlaye and three leagues from here. You
+have heard of Vlaye, then, Monsieur--Monsieur des Voeux?"
+
+"Without doubt, M. le Vicomte."
+
+"Indeed! In what way, may I ask?" There was a faint tinge of suspicion
+in his tone.
+
+"At Rochechouart I was told that the roads in that direction were not
+over safe."
+
+The Vicomte laughed in his sardonic fashion. "They begin to cry out,
+do they?" he said. "The fat burgesses who fleece us? Not very safe,
+ha, ha! The roads! Not so safe as their back-shops where they lend to
+us at cent per cent!"--with bitterness. "It is well that there is some
+one to fleece them in their turn!"
+
+"They told me as much as that," des Ageaux replied with gravity. "So
+much, indeed, that I was surprised to find your gates still open! They
+gave me to understand that no man slept without a guard within four
+leagues of Vlaye."
+
+"They told you that, did they?" the Vicomte answered. And he chuckled,
+well satisfied. It pleased him to think that if he and his could no
+longer keep Jacques Bonhomme in order, there were others who could.
+"They told you not far from the truth. A little later, and you had
+been barred out even here. Not that I fear the Captain of Vlaye. Hawks
+pike not out hawks' eyes," with a lifting of the head, and an odd show
+of arrogance. "We are good friends, M. de Vlaye and I."
+
+"Still you bar your gates, soon or late?" the Lieutenant replied with
+a smile.
+
+A shadow fell across the Vicomte's face. "Not against him," he said
+shortly.
+
+"No, of course not," des Voeux replied. "I had forgotten. You have the
+Crocans also at no great distance. I was forgetting them."
+
+The sudden rigidity of his younger listeners, and the silence which
+fell on all, warned him, as soon as he had spoken, that he had
+said something amiss. Nor was the silence all. When his host next
+spoke--after an interval--it was with a passion as far removed from
+the cynical rudeness to which he had treated his children as are the
+poles apart. "That name is not named in this house!" he cried, his
+voice thin and tremulous. "By no one!" he struck the table with a
+shaking hand. "Understand me, sir, by no one! God's curse on them! Ay,
+and on all who----"
+
+"No, sir, no!" The cry came from the girl. "Do not curse him!"
+
+She was on her feet. For an instant the Lieutenant, seeing her
+father's distorted face, feared that he would strike her. But the
+result was different. The opposition that might have maddened the
+angry man, had the effect of sobering him. "Sit down!" he muttered,
+passing his napkin over his face. "Sit down, fool! Sit down! And
+you"--he paused a moment, striving to regain the gibing tone that was
+habitual to him--"you, sir, may now see how it is. I told you we had
+no manners. You have now the proof of it. I doubt I must keep you,
+until the Abbess, my daughter, pays her next visit, that you may see
+at least one Villeneuve who is neither clown nor dotard!"
+
+Man of the world as he was, the King's Lieutenant knew not what to say
+to this outburst. He murmured a vague apology, and thought how
+different all was from the anticipations which the scent of hay and
+the farmyard peace had raised in him on his arrival. This old man,
+rotting in the husk of his former greatness, girding at his helpless
+children, gnawing, in the decay of his family's grandeur, on his heart
+and theirs, returning scorn for scorn, and spite for spite, but on
+those who were innocent of either, ignorant of either--this was a
+picture to the painting of which the most fanciful must have brought
+some imagination. Under the surface lay something more; something that
+had to do with the Crocans. He fancied that he could make a guess at
+the secret; and that it had to do with the girl's lover. But the meal
+was closing, the Vicomte's rising interrupted his thoughts, and
+whatever interest the question had for him, he was forced to put it
+away for the time.
+
+The Vicomte bowed a stiff good-night. "Boor as he is, I fear that you
+must now put up with my son," he said, smiling awry. "He has the Tower
+Room, where, in my time, I have known the best company in the province
+lie, when good company was; it has been scarce," he continued
+bitterly, "since Coutras. He will find you a lodging there, and if the
+accommodation be rough, and your room-fellow what you see him,"
+shrugging his shoulders, "at least you will have space enough and
+follow good gentry. I have known the Governor of Poitou and the
+Lieutenant of Périgord, with two of the Vicomtes of the Limousin, lie
+there--and fourteen truckle-beds about them. In those days was little
+need to bar our gates at night. Solomon! The lanthorn, fool! I bid
+you good-night, sir!"
+
+Des Ageaux bowed his acknowledgements, and following in the train of
+an older serving-man than he had yet seen; who, bearing a lanthorn,
+led him up a small staircase. Roger the hapless followed. On the first
+floor the guest noted the doors of four rooms, two on either side of a
+middle passage, that got its light from a window at the end of the
+house. Such rooms--or rooms opening one through the other--were at
+that date reserved for the master and mistress of the château, and
+their daughters, maiden or married. For something of the old system
+which secluded women, and a century before had forbidden their
+appearance at Court, still prevailed; nor was the Lieutenant at all
+surprised when his guide, turning from these privileged apartments,
+led him up a flight of four or five steps at the hither end of the
+passage. And so through a low doorway.
+
+He passed the door, and was surprised to find himself in the open air
+on the roof of the hall, the stars above him, and the night breeze
+cooling his brow. The steeply-pitched lead ended in a broad, flat
+gutter, fenced by a rail fixed in the parapet. The servant led him
+along the path which this gutter provided to a door in the wall of the
+great round tower that rose twenty feet above the house. This gave
+entrance to a small chamber--one of those commonly found between the
+two skins of such old buildings--which served both for landing and
+ante-room. From it the dark opening of a winding staircase led upwards
+on one hand; on the other a low-browed door masked the course of the
+downward flight.
+
+Across this closet--bare as bare walls could make it--the grey-bearded
+servant led him in two strides, and opening a farther door introduced
+him into the chamber which had seen so much good company. It was a
+gloomy, octagonal room of great size, lighted in the daytime by four
+deep-sunk windows, and occupying--save for such narrow closets as that
+through which they entered--a whole storey of the tower. The lanthorn
+did but make darkness visible, but Solomon proceeded to light two
+rushlights that stood in iron sconces on the wall, and by their light
+the Lieutenant discerned three truckle-beds laid between two of the
+windows. He could well believe, so vast was the apartment, that
+fourteen had not cumbered its bareness. At this date a couple of
+chests, as many stools, a bundle of old spears and a heavy
+three-legged table made up, with some dingy, tattered hangings, the
+whole furniture of the chamber.
+
+The old serving-man set down the lanthorn and looked about him
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Thirty-four I've seen sleep here," he said. "The Governor of Poitou,
+and the Governor of Périgord, and the four Vicomtes of the Limousin,
+and twenty-eight gentles in truckles."
+
+"Twenty-eight?" the Lieutenant questioned, measuring in some
+astonishment the space with his eye. "But your master said----"
+
+"Twenty-eight, by your leave," the man answered obstinately. "And
+every man his dog! A gentleman was a gentleman then, and a Vicomte a
+Vicomte. But since that cursed battle at Coutras set us down and put
+these Huguenots up, there is an end of gentry almost. Ay, thirty--was
+it thirty, I said?"
+
+"Four, you said. Thirty-four," des Ageaux answered, smiling.
+"Good-night."
+
+The man shook his head sombrely, bade them goodnight, and closed the
+door on them.
+
+An instant later he could be heard groping his way back through the
+closet and over the roof. The Lieutenant, as soon as the sound ceased,
+looked round and thought that he had seldom lain in a gloomier place.
+The windows were but wooden lattices innocent of glass, and through
+the slats of the nearest a strong shoot of ivy grew into the room. The
+night air entered with it and stirred the ragged hangings that covered
+a part of the walls; hangings that to add to the general melancholy
+had once been black, a remnant, it is possible, of the funeral
+trappings of some dead Vicomte. Frogs croaked in a puddle without; one
+of the lattices creaked open at intervals, only to close again with a
+hollow report; the rushlights flared sideways in the draught. Des
+Ageaux had read of such a room in the old romances, in _Bevis of
+Hampton_, or the _History of Armida_; a room of shadows and gloom,
+owl-flittings and dead furnishings. But he smiled at the thoughts it
+called up. He had often lain in his cloak under the sky amid dead men.
+Nevertheless, "Do you sleep here alone?" he asked, turning to his
+companion, who had seated himself despondently on one of the beds.
+
+The lad, oppressed by what had gone forward downstairs, barely looked
+up. "Yes," he began, "since"--and then, breaking off, he added
+sullenly, "Yes, I do."
+
+"Then you don't lack courage!" des Ageaux replied.
+
+"People sleep well when they are tired," the youth returned, "as I am
+to-night."
+
+The Lieutenant accepted the hint, and postponed until the morrow the
+questions he had it in his mind to ask. Nodding a good-humoured assent
+he proceeded to his simple arrangements for the night, placed his
+sword and pistols beside the truckle-bed, and in a few minutes was
+sleeping as soundly on his thin palliasse as if he had been in truth
+the poverty-stricken gentleman of Brittany he once had been and still
+might be again.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                          THE TOWER CHAMBER.
+
+
+An hour or two later the Lieutenant awoke suddenly. He rose on his
+elbow, and listened. Inured to a life of change which had cast him
+many times into strange beds and the company of stranger bed-fellows,
+he had not to ask himself where he was, or how he came to be there. He
+knew these things with a soldier's instinct, before his eyes were
+open. That which he did ask himself was, what had roused him.
+
+For it was still the dead of night, and all in the château, and all
+without, save the hoarse voices of the frogs, seemed quiet. Through
+the lattice that faced him the moonbeams fell on the floor in white,
+criss-cross patterns; which the pointed shape of the windows made to
+resemble chequered shields--the black and white escutcheons of his
+native province. These patches of light diffused about them a faint
+radiance, sufficient, but no more than sufficient, to reveal the
+outlines of the furniture, the darker masses of the beds, and even the
+vague limits of the chamber. He marked nothing amiss, however, except
+that which had probably roused him. The nearest lattice, that one
+through which he had noted the ivy growing, stood wide open. Doubtless
+the breeze, light as it was, had swung the casement inwards, and the
+creak of the hinge, or the coolness of the unbroken stream of air
+which blew across his bed, had disturbed him.
+
+Satisfied with the explanation, he lay down with a sigh of content,
+and was about to sink into sleep when a low, sibilant sound caught his
+ear, fretted him awhile, finally dragged him up, broadly awake. What
+was it? What caused it? The gentle motion of the loosened ivy on the
+sill? Or the wind toying with the leaves outside? Or the stir of the
+ragged hangings that moved weirdly on the wall? Or was some one
+whispering?
+
+The last was the fact, and, assured of it, des Ageaux peered through
+the gloom at the nearer pallet, and discovered that it was empty. Then
+he reflected. The ivy, which grew through the window, must have held
+the lattice firm against a much stronger breeze than was blowing. It
+followed that the casement had been opened by some one; probably by
+some one who had entered the room that way.
+
+It might be no affair of his, but on the other hand it might be very
+much his affair. He looked about the room, making no sound, but
+keeping a hand raised to seize his weapons on the least alarm.
+
+He could discover neither figure nor any sign of movement in the room.
+Yet the whispering persisted. More puzzled, he raised himself higher,
+and then a streak of light which the low, lumpy mass of one of the
+truckle-beds had hidden, broke on him. It shone under the door by
+which he had entered, and proceeded, beyond doubt, from a lanthorn or
+rushlight in the antechamber.
+
+What was afoot? It is not as a rule for good that men whisper at dead
+of night, nor to say their prayers that they steal from their beds in
+the small hours. Des Ageaux was far from a timid man--or he had not
+been Lieutenant-Governor of Périgord--but he knew himself alone in a
+strange house, and a remote corner of that house; and though he
+believed that he held the map of the country he might be deceiving
+himself. Possibly, though he had seen no sign of it, he was known. His
+host styled himself the Captain of Vlaye's friend; he might think to
+do Vlaye a kindness at his guest's expense. Nor was that all. Lonely
+travellers ran risks in those days; it was not only from inns that
+they vanished and left no sign. He bore, it was true, not much of
+price about him, and riding without attendance might be thought to
+have less. But, all said and done, the house was remote, the Vicomte
+poor and a stranger. It might be as well to see what was passing.
+
+He rose noiselessly to his feet, and, taking his sword, crept across
+the floor. He had lain down in the greater part of his clothes, and
+whatever awaited him, he was ready. As he drew near the door, the
+whispering on the farther side persisted. But it was low, the sound
+lacked menace, and before he laid his ear to the oak some shame of the
+proceeding seized him.
+
+His scruples were wasted. He could not, even when close, distinguish a
+word; so wary were the speakers, so low their voices. Then the
+absurdity of his position, if he were detected and the matter had
+naught to do with him, took him by the throat. The chamber, with its
+patches of moonlight and its dim spaces, was all quiet about him, and
+either he must rest content with that, or he must open and satisfy
+himself. He took his resolution, found the latch, and opened the door.
+
+He was more or less prepared for what he saw. Not so the three whom he
+surprised in their midnight conference. The girl whom he had seen at
+supper sprang with a cry of alarm from the step on which she had her
+seat, and retreating upwards as quickly as the cloak in which she was
+muffled would let her, made as if she would escape by the tower
+stairs. The two men--Roger, the son of the house, and another, a
+taller youth, who leant against the wall beside him--straightened
+themselves with a jerk; while the stranger, who had the air of being
+two or three years older than Roger, laid his hand on his weapon. A
+lanthorn which stood on the stone floor between the three, and was the
+only other object in the closet, cast its light upwards; which had the
+effect of distorting the men's features, and exaggerating looks
+already disordered.
+
+The Lieutenant, we have said, was not wholly surprised. None the less
+the elder of the two young men was the first to find his tongue. "What
+do you here?" he cried, his eyes gleaming with resentment. "We came to
+be private here. What do you wish, sir?"
+
+Des Ageaux took one step over the threshold and bowed low. "To offer
+my apologies," he replied, with a tinge of humour in his tone, "and
+then to withdraw. To be plain, sir, I heard whispering, and,
+half-roused, I fancied that it might concern me. Forgive me,
+mademoiselle," he continued, directing an easy and not ungraceful
+gesture to the shrinking girl, who cowered on the dark stairs as if
+she wished they might swallow her. "Your pardon also, Monsieur
+Charles."
+
+"You know my name?" the stranger exclaimed, with a swift, perturbed
+glance at the others.
+
+"Your name and no more," des Ageaux answered, smiling and not a whit
+disturbed. His manner was perfectly easy. "I heard it as I opened. But
+be at rest, that which is not meant for me I do not keep. You will
+understand that the hour was late, I found the window open, I heard
+voices--some suspicion was not unnatural. Have no fear, however.
+To-morrow I shall only have had one dream the more."
+
+"But dream or no dream," the person he had addressed as Charles
+blurted out, "if you mention it----"
+
+"I shall not mention it."
+
+"To the Vicomte even?"
+
+"Not even to him! The presence of mademoiselle's brother," des Ageaux
+continued, with a keen glance at Roger, "were warrant for silence, had
+I the right to speak."
+
+The girl started and the hood of her cloak fell back. With loosened
+hair and parted lips she looked so pretty that he was sorry he had
+struck at her ever so slightly. "You think, sir," she exclaimed in a
+tone half-indignant, half-awestruck, "that this is my lover?"
+
+His eyes passed from her to the taller young man. He bowed low. "I
+did," he said, the courtesy of his manner redoubled. "Now I see that
+he is your brother. Forgive me, mademoiselle, I am unlucky this
+evening. Lest I offend again--and my presence alone must be an
+offence--I take my leave."
+
+Charles stepped forward. "Not," he said somewhat peremptorily, "before
+you have assured us again of your silence! Understand me, sir, this is
+no child's play! Were my father to hear of my presence, he would make
+my sister suffer for it. Were he to discover me here--you do not know
+him yet--it might cost a life!"
+
+"What can I say more," des Ageaux replied with a little stiffness,
+"than I have said? Why should I betray you?"
+
+"Enough, sir, if you understand."
+
+"I understand enough!" And then, "If I can do no more than be
+silent----"
+
+"You can do no more."
+
+"I take my leave." And, bowing, with an air of aloofness he stepped
+back and closed the door on them.
+
+When he had done so the three looked eagerly at one another. But they
+did not speak until his footsteps on the chamber floor had ceased to
+sound. Then, "What is this?" the elder brother muttered, frowning
+slightly at the younger. "There is something here I do not understand.
+Who is he? What is he? You told me that he was some poor gentleman
+adventuring alone, and without servants, and staying here for the
+night with a lame horse and an empty purse. But----"
+
+"He was not like this at supper," Roger replied, excusing himself.
+
+"But he has nothing of the tone of the man you described."
+
+"Not now," Bonne said. "But at supper he was different in some way."
+And recalling how he had looked at her when he thought that Charles
+was her lover, she blushed.
+
+"He is no poor man," Charles muttered. "Did you mark his ring?"
+
+"No."
+
+"May-be at supper it was turned inward, but as he stood there with his
+hand on the door post, the light fell on it. _Three leopards passant
+or on a field vert!_ I have seen that coat, and more than once!"
+
+"But why should not the poor gentleman wear his coat?" Bonne urged.
+"Perhaps it is all that is left of his grandeur."
+
+"In gold on green enamel?" Charles asked, raising his eyebrows.
+"Certainly his sword was of the plainest. But I don't like it! Why is
+he here? What is he doing? Can he be friend to Vlaye, and on his way
+to help him?"
+
+Abruptly the girl stepped forward, and flinging an arm round her
+brother's neck, pressed herself against him. "Give it up! Give it up!"
+she murmured. "Charles! Dear brother, listen to me. Give it up!"
+
+"It were better you gave me up," he replied in a tone between humour
+and pathos, as he stroked her hair. "But you are Villeneuve at heart,
+Bonne----"
+
+"Bonne by nature, Bonne by name!" Roger muttered, caressing her with
+his eyes.
+
+"And stand by those you love, whatever come of it!" Charles continued.
+"Would you then have me leave those"--with a grimace which she, having
+her face on his shoulder, could not see--"whom, if I do not love, I
+have chosen! Leave them because danger threatens? Because Vlaye gives
+the word?"
+
+"But what can you do against him?" she answered in a tearful tone.
+"You say yourself that they are but a rabble, your Crocans! Broken
+men, beggars and what not, peasants and ploughboys, ill-armed and
+ill-fed! What can they do against men-at-arms? Against Vlaye? I
+thought when I got word to you to come, in order that I might tell you
+what he was planning--I thought that you would listen to me!"
+
+"And am I not listening, little one?" he replied, fondling her hair.
+
+"But you will not be guided?"
+
+"That is another thing," he replied more soberly. "Had I known, it is
+true, what I know now, had I known of what sort they were to whom I
+was joining myself, I might not have done it. I might have borne a
+little longer"--his tone grew bitter--"the life we lead here! I might
+have borne a little longer to rust and grow boorish, and to stand for
+clown and rustic in M. de Vlaye's eyes when he deigns to visit us! I
+might have put up a little longer with the answer I got when I craved
+leave to see the wars and the world--that as my fathers had made my
+bed I must lie on it. Ay, and more! If he--I will not call him
+father--had spared me his sneers only a little, if he had let a day go
+by without casting in my face the lack that was no fault of mine, I
+would have still tried to bear it. But not a day did he spare me! Not
+one day, as God is my witness!"
+
+Her sorrowful silence acknowledged the truth of his words. At length,
+"But if these folk," she said timidly, "are of so wretched a sort,
+Charles?"
+
+"Wretched they are," he answered, "but their cause is good. Better
+fall with them than rise by such deeds as have driven them to arms. I
+tell you that the things I have heard, as I sat over their fires by
+night in the caves about Bourdeilles where they lie, would arm not
+men's hands only, but women's! Would spoil your sleep of nights, and
+strong men's sleep! Poor cottars killed and hamlets burned, in pure
+sport! Children flung out and women torn from homes, and through a
+whole country-side corn trampled wantonly, and oxen killed to make a
+meal for four! But I cannot tell you what they have suffered, for you
+are a woman and you could not bear it!"
+
+Bonne forgot her fears for him. She leant forward--she had gone back
+to her seat on the stairs--and clenched her small hands. "And M. de
+Vlaye it is," she cried, "he who has done more than any other to
+madden them, who now proposes to rise upon their fall? Monsieur de
+Vlaye it is who, having driven them to this, will now crush them and
+say he does the King service, and so win pardon for a thousand
+crimes?"
+
+But the light had gone out in Charles's eyes. "Ay, and win it he will.
+So it will go," he said moodily. "So it will happen! He has seen afar
+the chance of securing himself, and he will seize it, by doing what,
+for the time, no other has means to do."
+
+"He who kindled the fire will be rewarded for putting it out?"
+
+"Just so!"
+
+"But can you do nothing against him?" Roger muttered.
+
+"We may hold our own for a time, in the caves and hills about Brantôme
+perhaps," the elder brother answered. "But after a while he will
+starve us out. And in the open such folks as we have, ill-armed,
+ill-found, with scarce a leader older than myself, will melt before
+his pikes like smoke before the wind!"
+
+Roger's eyes glistened. "Not if I were with you," he muttered. "There
+should be one blow struck before he rode over us! But"--he let his
+chin sink on his breast--"what am I?"
+
+"Brave enough, I know," Charles answered, putting his hand
+affectionately on the lad's shoulder. "Braver than I am, perhaps. But
+it is not the end, be the end what it may, good lad, that weighs me
+down and makes me coward. It is the misery of seeing all go wrong hour
+by hour and day by day! Of seeing the cause with which I must now sink
+or swim mishandled! Of striving to put sense and discipline into the
+folk who are either clowns, unteachable by aught but force, or a
+rabble of worthless vagrants drawn to us as to any other cause that
+promises safety from the gallows. And yet, if I were older and had
+seen war and handled men, I feel that even of this stuff I could make
+a thing should frighten Vlaye. Ay, and for a time I thought I could,"
+he continued gloomily. "But they would not be driven, and short of
+hanging half a dozen, which I dare not attempt, I must be naught!"
+
+"Do you think," Roger muttered, "that if you had me beside you--I have
+strong arms----"
+
+"God forbid!" Charles answered, looking sadly at him. "Dear lad, one
+is enough! What would Bonne do without you? It is not your place to go
+forth."
+
+"If I were straight!"
+
+The girl leaned forward and took his hand. "You are straight for me,"
+she said softly. "Straight for me! More precious than the straightest
+thing in the world!"
+
+He sighed and Bonne echoed the sigh. It was the first time the three
+had met since Charles's flight; since, fretted by inaction and stung
+beyond patience by the gibes of the father--who, while he withheld the
+means of making a figure in the world, did not cease to sneer at
+supineness--he had taken a step which had seemed desperate, and now
+seemed fatal. For if this Crocan rising were not a Jacquerie in name,
+if it were not stained as yet by the excesses which made that word a
+terror, it was still a peasant-rising. It was still a revolt of the
+canaille, of the mob; and more indulgent fathers than the Vicomte
+would have disowned the son who, by joining it, ranged himself against
+his caste.
+
+The younger man had known that when he took the step; yet he had been
+content to take it. The farther it set him from the Vicomte the
+better! But he had not known nor had Bonne guessed how hopeless was
+the cause he was embracing, how blind its leaders, how shiftless its
+followers, how certain and disastrous its end! But he knew now. He
+knew that, to the attack which M. de Vlaye meditated, the mob of clods
+and vagrants must fall an easy prey.
+
+Young and high-spirited, moved a little by the peasants' wrongs, and
+more by his own, he had done this thing. He had rushed on ruin, made
+good his father's gibes, played into M. de Vlaye's hands--the hands of
+the man who had patronised him a hundred times, and with a sneer made
+sport of his rusticity. The contempt of the man of the world for the
+raw boy had sunk into the lad's soul, and he hated Vlaye. To drag
+Vlaye down had been one of Charles's day-dreams. He had pined for the
+hour when, at the head of the peasants who were to hail him as their
+leader, he should tread the hated scutcheon under foot.
+
+Now he saw that all the triumph would be M. de Vlaye's, and that by
+his bold venture he had but added a feather to the hated plume. And
+Bonne and Roger, mute because their love taught them when to speak and
+when to refrain, gazed sadly at the lanthorn. The silence lasted a
+long minute, and was broken in the end, not by their voices, but by
+the distant creak of a door.
+
+Bonne sprang to her feet, the colour gone from her face. "Hush!" she
+cried. "What was that? Listen."
+
+They listened, their hearts beating. Presently Roger, his face almost
+as bloodless as Bonne's, snatched up the lanthorn. "It is the
+Vicomte!" he gasped. "He is coming! Quick, Charles! You must go the
+way you came!"
+
+"But Bonne?" his brother muttered, hanging back. "What is she to do?"
+
+Roger, his hand on the door of the Tower Chamber, stood aghast.
+Charles might escape unseen, there was still time. But Bonne? If her
+father found the girl there? And the stranger was in the Tower Room,
+she could not retreat thither. What was she to do?
+
+The girl's wits found the answer. She pointed to the stairs. "I will
+hide above," she whispered. "Do you go!" It was still of Charles she
+thought. "Do you go!" But the terror in her eyes--she feared her
+father as she feared no one else in the world--wrung the brothers'
+hearts.
+
+Charles hesitated. "The door at the top?" he babbled. "It is locked, I
+fear!"
+
+"He will not go up!" she whispered. "And while he is in the Tower Room
+I can escape."
+
+She vanished as she spoke, in the darkness of the narrow winding
+shaft--and it was time she did. The Vicomte was scarce three paces
+from the outer door when the two who were left sprang into the Tower
+Chamber.
+
+The Lieutenant was on his feet by the side of his bed. He had not gone
+to sleep, and he caught their alarm, he had heard the last hurried
+whispers, he had guessed their danger. He was not surprised when
+Charles, without a word, crossed the floor in a couple of bounds,
+flung himself recklessly over the sill of the window, clung an instant
+by one hand, then disappeared. A moment the shoot of ivy that grew
+into the chamber jerked violently, the next the door was flung wide
+open, and the Vicomte, a gaunt figure bearing a sword in one hand, a
+lanthorn in the other, stood on the threshold. The light of the
+lanthorn which he held above his head that he might detect what was
+before him, obscured his face. But the weapon and the tone of his
+voice proclaimed the fury of his suspicions. "Who is here?" he cried.
+"Who is here?" And again, as if in his rage he could frame no other
+words, "Who is here, I say? Speak!"
+
+Roger, on his feet, the tell-tale lanthorn in his hand, could not
+force a word. He stood speechless, motionless, self-convicted; and had
+all lain with him, all had been known. Fortunately des Ageaux took on
+himself to answer.
+
+"Who is here, sir?" he said in a voice a tone louder and a shade
+easier than was natural. "The devil, I think! For I swear no one else
+could climb this wall!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"And climb it," des Ageaux persisted, disregarding the question, "very
+nearly to this sill! I heard him below five minutes ago. And if I had
+not been fool enough to rouse your son and bid him light we had had
+him safe by now on this floor!"
+
+The Vicomte glared. The story was glib, well told, animated; but he
+doubted it. He knew what he had expected to find. "You lit the
+lanthorn?" he snarled. "When?"
+
+"Two minutes back--it might be more," des Ageaux replied. "Now he is
+clean gone. Clean gone, I fear," he added as he stepped into the
+embrasure of the window and leant forward cautiously, is if he thought
+a shot from below a thing not impossible. "I hear nothing, at any
+rate."
+
+The Vicomte, struggling with senile rage, stared about him. "But I saw
+a light!" he cried. "In the outer room!"
+
+"The outer room!"
+
+"Under the door."
+
+"Shone under both doors, I suppose," des Ageaux replied, still intent
+to all appearance on the dark void outside. "I'll answer for it," he
+added carelessly as he turned, "that he did not go out by the door."
+
+"He will not go out now," the Vicomte retorted with grim suspicion,
+"for I have locked the outer door." He showed the key hung on a finger
+of the hand which held the lanthorn.
+
+The sight was too much for Roger; he understood at once that it cut
+off his sister's retreat. A sound between a groan and an exclamation
+broke from him.
+
+The Vicomte lifted the lanthorn to his face. "What now, booby?" he
+said. "Who has hurt you?" And, seeing what he saw, he cursed the lad
+for a coward.
+
+"I did not feel over brave myself five minutes ago," the Lieutenant
+remarked.
+
+The Vicomte turned on him as if he would curse him also. But, meeting
+his eyes, he thought better of it, and swallowed the rage he longed to
+vent. He stared about him a minute or more, stalking here and there
+offensively, and trying to detect something on which to fasten. But he
+found nothing, and, having flung the light of his lanthorn once more
+around the room, he stood an instant, then, turning, went sharply--as
+if his suspicions had now a new direction--towards the door.
+
+"Good-night!" he muttered churlishly.
+
+"Good-night!" the Lieutenant answered, but in the act of speaking he
+met the look of horror in Roger's eyes, remembered and understood.
+"She is still there," the lad's white lips spelled out, as they
+listened to the grating noise of the key in the lock. "She could not
+escape. And he suspects. He is going to her room."
+
+Des Ageaux stared a moment nonplussed. The matter was nothing to him,
+nothing, yet his face faintly mirrored the youth's consternation.
+Then, in a stride, he was at his bedside. He seized one of the
+horse-pistols which lay beside his pillow, and, before the lad
+understood his purpose, he levelled it at the open window and fired
+into the night.
+
+The echoes of the report had not ceased to roll hollowly through the
+Tower before the door flew wide again, and the Vicomte reappeared, his
+eyes glittering, his weapon shaking in his excitement. "What is it?"
+he cried, for at first he could not see, the smoke obscured the room.
+"What is it? What is it?"
+
+"A miss, I fear," des Ageaux answered coolly. He stood with his eyes
+fixed on the window, the smoking weapon in his hand. "I fear, a
+miss--I had a notion all the time that he was in the ivy outside, and
+when he poked up his head----"
+
+"His head?" the Vicomte exclaimed. He was shaking from head to foot.
+
+"Well, it looked like his head," des Ageaux replied more doubtfully.
+He moved a step nearer to the window. "But I could not swear to it. It
+might have been an owl!"
+
+"An owl?" the Vicomte answered in an unsteady tone. "You fired at an
+owl?"
+
+"Whatever it was I missed it," des Ageaux answered with decision, and
+in a somewhat louder tone. "If you will step up here--but I fear you
+are not well, M. le Vicomte?"
+
+He spoke truly, the Vicomte was not well. He had had a shock. Cast off
+his son as he might, hate him as he might--and hate him he did, as one
+who had turned against him and brought dishonour on his house--that
+shot in the night had shaken him. He leant against the wall, his lips
+white, his breath coming quickly. And a minute or more elapsed before
+he recovered himself and stood upright.
+
+He kept his eyes averted from des Ageaux. He turned instead to Roger.
+Whether he feared for himself and would not be alone, or he suspected
+some complicity between the two, he signed to the lad to take up the
+lanthorn and go before him. And, moving stiffly and unsteadily across
+the floor, he got himself in silence to the door. With something
+between a bow and a glance--it was clear that he could not trust his
+tongue--he was out of the room.
+
+The Lieutenant sat on his bed for some time, expecting Roger to
+return. But the lad did not appear, and after an interval des Ageaux
+took on himself to search the staircase. It was untenanted. The girl,
+using the chance he had afforded her, had escaped.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                        STILL WATERS TROUBLED.
+
+
+Had Bonne de Villeneuve, a day earlier, paid a visit much in fashion
+at that time, and consulted the "dark man" who, in an upper room on
+the wall of Angoulême, followed the stars and cast horoscopes, and was
+reputed to have foretold the death of the first Duke of Joyeuse as
+that nobleman passed southwards to the field of Coutras, she might
+have put faith in such of the events of the night as the magic crystal
+showed her; until it came to mirror, faint as an evening mist beside
+the river, her thoughts after the event. Then, had it foretold that,
+as she lay quaking in her bed, she would be thinking neither of the
+brother, whose desperate venture wrung her heart, nor of Roger, her
+dearer self, but of a stranger--a stranger, whose name she had not
+known six hours, and of whose past she knew nothing, she would have
+paused, refusing credence. She would have smiled at the phantasm of
+the impossible.
+
+Yet so it was. Into the quiet pool of her maiden heart had fallen in
+an hour the stone that sooner or later troubles the sweet waters. As
+she lay thinking with wide-open eyes, her mind, which should have been
+employed with her brother's peril, or her own escape, or her father's
+rage, was busy with the stranger who had dropped so suddenly into her
+life, and had begun on the instant to play a sovereign part. She
+recalled his aspect as he looked in on them, cool and confident, at
+their midnight conference. She heard his tone as he baffled her
+father's questions with cunning answers. She marvelled at the wit that
+in the last pinch had saved her from discovery. He seemed to her a man
+of the world such as had not hitherto come within the range of her
+experience. Was he also the perfect knight of whom she had not been
+woman if she had not dreamed?
+
+What, she wondered, must his life have been, who, cast among strange
+surroundings, bore himself so masterfully, and so shrewdly took his
+part! What chances he must have seen, what dangers run, how many men,
+how many cities visited! He might have known the Court, that strange
+_mêlange_ of splendour and wickedness, and mystery and valour. He
+might have seen the King, shrewdest of captains, bravest of princes;
+he might have encountered eye to eye men whose names were history. He
+came out of the great outer world of which she had visions, and
+already she was prepared to invest him with wonderful qualities. Her
+curiosity once engaged, she constructed for him first one life and
+then another, and then yet another--all on the same foundation, the
+one fact which he had told them, that he was a poor gentleman of
+Brittany. She considered his ring, and the shape of his clothes, and
+his manner of eating, which she found more delicate than her
+brothers'; and she fancied, but she told herself that she was foolish
+to think it, that she detected under his frigid bearing a habit of
+command that duller eyes failed to discern.
+
+She was ashamed at last of the persistence with which her thoughts ran
+on him, and she tried to think of other things, and so thought of him
+again, and, awaking to the fact, smiled. But without blushing; partly
+because, whatever he was, he stood a great way from her, and partly
+because it was only her fancy that was touched, and not her heart; and
+partly again because she knew that he would be gone by mid-day, and
+could by no possibility form part of her life. Nevertheless, it was
+not until her time for rising came that anxiety as to her brother's
+safety and her father's anger eclipsed him. Then, uncertain how much
+the Vicomte knew, how near the truth he guessed, she forgot her hero,
+and thought exclusively of her father's resentment.
+
+She might have spared her fears. The Vicomte was a sour and embittered
+man, but neither by nature nor habit a violent one. Rage had for an
+hour rendered him capable of the worst, capable of the murder of his
+son if, having an arm in his hand, he had met him, capable of the
+expulsion of his daughter from his house. But the fit was not natural
+to him; it was not so that he avenged the wrongs which the world had
+heaped upon him--since Coutras. He fell back easily and at once into
+the black cynical mood that was his own. He was too old and weak, he
+had too long brooded in inaction, he had too long wreaked his
+vengeance on the feeble to take strong measures now, whatever happened
+to him.
+
+But some hours elapsed before Bonne knew this, or how things would be.
+It was not her father's custom to descend before noon, for with his
+straitened means and shrunken establishment he went little abroad; and
+he would have died rather than stoop to the rustic tasks which Roger
+pursued, and of which Bonne's small brown hands were not ignorant. She
+had not seen him when, an hour before noon, she repaired to a seat in
+the most remote corner of the garden, taking with her some household
+work on which she was engaged.
+
+The garden of the château of Villeneuve--the garden proper that is,
+for the dry moat which divided the house from the courtyard was
+planted with pot-herbs and cabbages--formed a square, having for its
+one side the length of the house. It lay along the face of the
+building remote from the courtyard, and was only accessible through
+it. Its level, raised by art or nature, stood more than a man's height
+above the surrounding country; of which, for this reason, it afforded
+a pleasant and airy prospect. The wall which surrounded and buttressed
+it stood on the inner side no more than three feet high, but rose on
+the outer from a moat, the continuation of that which has just been
+mentioned.
+
+The pleasaunce thus secured on all sides from intrusion consisted
+first of a paved walk which ran under the windows of the château, and
+was boarded by a row of ancient mulberry-trees; secondly, beyond this,
+of a strip of garden ground planted with gooseberry-bushes and
+fruit-trees, and bisected by a narrow walk which led from the house to
+a second terrace formed on the outer wall. This latter terrace lay
+open towards the country and at either end, but was hidden from the
+prying eyes of the house by a line of elms, poled and cut espalier
+fashion. It offered at either extremity the accommodation of a
+lichen-covered stone bench which tempted the old to repose and the
+young to reverie. The east bench enabled a person seated sideways on
+it--and so many had thus sat that the wall was hollowed by their
+elbows--to look over the willow-edged river and the tract of lush
+meadows which its loop enclosed. The western seat had not this poetic
+advantage, but by way of compensation afforded to sharp eyes a glimpse
+of the track--road it could not be called--which after passing the
+château wound through the forest on its course to Vlaye and the south.
+
+From childhood the seat facing the river had been Bonne's favourite
+refuge. Before she could walk she had played games in the dust beneath
+it. She had carried to it her small sorrows and her small joys, her
+fits of nursery passion, her moods as she grew older. She had nursed
+dolls on it, and fancies, dreamed dreams and built castles; and in a
+not unhappy, thought neglected girlhood, it had stood for that sweet
+and secret retreat, the bower of the budding life, which remains holy
+in the memory of worn men and women. The other bench, which commanded
+a peep of the road, had been more to her elder sister's taste; nor was
+the choice without a certain bearing on the character of each.
+
+This morning, she had not been five minutes at work before she heard
+footsteps on the garden path. The sun, near its highest, had driven
+her to the inner end of the seat, where the elm in summer leaf
+straggled widely over it, growing low, as elms will. She knew that
+whoever came she would see before she was seen.
+
+It turned out as she expected. M. des Ageaux lounged onto the terrace,
+and shading his eyes from the sun's rays, gazed on the prospect. She
+judged that he thought himself alone, for he took a short turn this
+way and that. Then, after a casual glance at the empty seats--empty as
+he doubtless judged, though she from her arbour of leaves could watch
+his every movement--he wheeled about, and, facing the château, seemed
+to satisfy himself that the wall of pollard elms sheltered him from
+sight.
+
+His next proceeding was mysterious. He drew from his breast a packet,
+of parchment or paper, unfolded it, and laid it flat on the wall
+before him. Then he stooped and after poring over it, glanced at the
+view, referred again to the paper, then again to the lie of the
+country, and the course of the river which flowed on his left. Finally
+he measured off a distance on the map. For a map it was, beyond doubt.
+
+A shadow fell on her as she watched him. Nor did his next movement
+dispel the feeling. Folding up the map he replaced it in his breast,
+and leaning over the wall he scrutinised the outer surface of the
+brickwork. Apparently he did not discover what he sought, for he
+raised himself again, and with eyes bent on the tangle of nettles and
+rough herbage that clothed the bottom of the moat, he moved slowly
+along the terrace towards her. He reached, without seeing her, the
+seat on which she sat, knelt on it with one knee, and leaning far over
+the moat, allowed a low laugh to escape him.
+
+She fought the faint suspicion that, unwelcome, asserted itself. He
+had behaved so honourably, so reticently, in all that had happened
+that she was determined not to believe aught to his discredit. But her
+folly, if foolish she was, must not imperil another. She made a mental
+note that there was one thing she must not tell him. Very quickly that
+reflection passed through her brain. And then--
+
+"Why do you laugh?" she said.
+
+He wheeled about so sharply that in another mood she must have
+laughed, so much she had the advantage of him. For an instant he was
+so taken aback that he did not speak. Then, "Why did you startle me?"
+he asked, his eyes smiling.
+
+"Because--yes, my brother came in that way."
+
+"I know it," he answered; "but not why you startled me, mademoiselle,
+a minute ago."
+
+"Nor I," she retorted, smiling faintly, "why you were so inquisitive,
+M. des Voeux?"
+
+"I am going to tell you that," he said. He seated himself on the bench
+so as to face her, and doffing his hat, held it between his face and
+the sun. He was not, we know, very amenable to the charms of women,
+and he saw in her no more than a girl of rustic breeding, comely and
+gentle, and something commonplace, but a good sister whose aid with
+her brother he needed. "I am going to tell you," he said; "because I
+am anxious to meet your brother again and to talk with him."
+
+She continued to meet his eyes, but her own were clouded. "On what
+subject," she asked, "if I am not too curious?"
+
+"The Crocans."
+
+On her guard as she was, the word put her out of countenance. She
+could not hide, and after one half-hearted attempt did not try to
+hide, her dismay. "The Crocans?" she said. "But why do you come to
+me?" her colour coming and going. "What have we to do with them, if
+you please? Or my brother?"
+
+"He has been banished from his home for some offence," the Lieutenant
+answered quietly. "Your father forbids the mention of the name
+Crocans. It is reasonable to infer that the offence is connected with
+them, and, in a word, that your brother has done what any young man
+with generous instincts and a love of adventure might do. He has
+joined them. I do not blame him."
+
+"You do not blame him?" she murmured. Never had she heard such words
+of the Crocans--except from her brother. "You mean that?"
+
+"I say it and mean it," the Lieutenant replied. But he spoke without
+emotion, emotion was not his forte. "Nor am I alone," he went on, "in
+holding such opinions. But the point, mademoiselle, is this. I wish to
+find a means of communicating with them, and he can and probably will
+be willing to aid me. For certain, if the worst comes to the worst, I
+can aid him."
+
+Bonne's heart beat rapidly. She did not--she told herself that she did
+not distrust him. Had it been her own secret he was seeking she would
+have delivered it to him freely. But the manner in which he had borne
+himself while he thought himself alone, the possession of the map, and
+the shrewdness with which he had traced her brother's movement and
+surprised a secret that was still a secret from the household,
+frightened her. And her very inexperience made her pause.
+
+"But first, I take it, you need his aid?" she murmured.
+
+"I wish to speak with him."
+
+"Have you seen my father?"
+
+He opened his eyes and bent a little nearer. "Do you mean,
+mademoiselle----"
+
+"I mean only," she said gently, "that if you express to him the views
+on the Crocans which you have just expressed to me, your opportunities
+of seeing my brother will be scant."
+
+He laughed. "I have not opened them to him," he said. "I have seen
+him, and whether he thinks that he was a little more exigent last
+night than the danger required, or he desires to prove to me that
+midnight alarms are not the rule at Villeneuve, he has not given me
+notice to go. His invitation to remain is not, perhaps," he smiled
+slightly, "of the warmest. But if you, mademoiselle, will second
+it----"
+
+She muttered--not without a blush--that it would give her pleasure.
+And he proceeded, "Then no difficulty on that point will arise."
+
+She stooped lower over her work. What was she to do? He wanted that
+which she had decided she must not give him. Just that! What was she
+to do?
+
+She was so long in answering, that he dubbed her awkward and
+mannerless. And thought it a pity, too; for she was a staunch sister,
+and had shown herself resourceful; and in repose her face, though
+brown and sunburnt, was not without grace. He came to the point. "May
+I count on you for this?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"For--what?"
+
+"That as soon as you can you will bring me face to face with your
+brother?"
+
+She looked up and met his gaze. "As soon as I think it safe to do so,"
+she said, "I will. You may depend on me."
+
+He had not divined her doubt, nor did he discern her quibble. Still,
+"Could I not go to him to-day?" he said. "If he is still in the
+neighbourhood?"
+
+She shook her head. "I do not know where he is," she answered, glad
+that she could say so much with truth. "But if he show himself, and it
+be safe, I will let you know. Roger----"
+
+"Ha! To be sure, Roger may know?"
+
+She smiled. "Roger and I are one," she said. "You must not expect to
+get from him what I do not give." She said it naïvely, with just so
+much of a smile as showed her at her best, and he hastened to say that
+he left himself in her hands. She blushed through her sunburn at that,
+but clung to her quibble, telling herself that this was a stranger,
+the other a brother, and that if she destroyed Charles she could never
+forgive herself.
+
+He saw that she was disturbed, and he changed the subject. "You have
+always lived here?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "but I can remember when things were different
+with us. We were not always so broken. Before Coutras--but," with a
+faint smile, "you have heard my father on that, and will not wish to
+hear me."
+
+"The Vicomte was present at the battle?"
+
+"Yes, he was in the centre of the Catholic army with the Duke of
+Joyeuse. He escaped with his life. But we lay in the path of the
+pursuit after the flight, and they sacked the house, and burned the
+hamlet by the ford--the one you passed--and the two farms in the bend
+of the river--the two behind you. They swept off every four-legged
+thing, every horse, and cow, and sheep, and left us bare. One of the
+servants who resisted was killed, and--and my mother died of the
+shock."
+
+She broke off with an uncontrollable shiver. She was silent. After a
+pause, "Perhaps you were at Coutras, M. des Voeux?" she said, looking
+up.
+
+"I was not of the party who sacked your house," he answered gravely.
+
+She knew then that he had fought on the other side; and she admired
+him for the tact with which he made it known to her. He was a soldier
+then. She wondered, as she bent over her work, if he had fought
+elsewhere, and under whom, and with what success. Had he prospered or
+sunk? He called himself a poor gentleman of Brittany, but that might
+have been his origin only, he might be something more now.
+
+In the earnestness of her thoughts she turned her eyes on his ring,
+and she blushed brightly when with a quick, almost rude movement he
+hid his hand. "I beg your pardon!" she murmured. "I was not thinking."
+
+"It is I should beg yours," he said quietly. "It is only that I do not
+want you to come to a false conclusion. This ring--in a word I wear
+it, but the arms are not mine. That is all."
+
+"Does that apply also," she asked, looking at him ingenuously, "to the
+pistols you carry, M. des Voeux? Or should I address you--for I saw
+last evening that they bore a duke's coronet--as your Grace?"
+
+He laughed gaily. "They are mine, but I am not a duke," he said.
+
+"Nor are you M. des Voeux?"
+
+Her acuteness surprised him. "I am afraid, mademoiselle," he said,
+"that you have a mind to exalt me into a hero of romance--whether I
+will or no."
+
+She bent over her work to hide her face. "A duke gave them to you, I
+suppose?" she said.
+
+"That is so," he replied sedately.
+
+"Did you save his life?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"I have heard," she returned, looking up thoughtfully, "that at
+Coutras a gentleman on the other side strove hard to save the Duke of
+Joyeuse's life, and did not desist until he was struck down by his own
+men."
+
+"He looked to make his account by him, no doubt," the Lieutenant
+answered coldly. "Perhaps," with a scarcely perceptible bitterness,
+"the Duke, had he lived, would have given him--a pair of pistols!"
+
+"That were a small return," she said indignantly, "for such a
+service!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. And to change the subject--
+
+"What are the grey ruins," he asked, "on the edge of the wood?"
+
+"They are part of the old Abbey," she answered without looking up,
+"afterwards removed to Vlaye, of which my sister is Abbess. There was
+a time, I believe, when the convent stood so close to the house that
+it was well-nigh one with it. There was some disorder, I believe, and
+the Diocesan obtained leave to have it moved, and it was planted on
+lands that belonged to us at that time."
+
+"Near Vlaye?"
+
+"Within half a league of it."
+
+"Your sister, then, is acquainted with the Captain of Vlaye?"
+
+She did not look up. "Yes," she said.
+
+"But you and your brothers?"
+
+"We know him and hate him--only less than we fear him!" She regretted
+her vehemence the moment she had spoken.
+
+But he merely nodded. "So do the Crocans, I fancy," he said. "It is
+rumoured that he is preparing something against them."
+
+"You know that?" she exclaimed in surprise.
+
+"Without being omniscient," he answered smiling. "I heard it in
+Barbesieux. It was that, perhaps," he continued shrewdly, "which you
+wished to tell your brother yesterday."
+
+On that she was near confessing all to him and telling him, in spite
+of her resolutions, where on the next day he could find her brother.
+But she clung to her decision, and a minute later he rose and moved
+away in the direction of the house.
+
+When they met at table the mystery of the Vicomte's sudden impulse to
+hospitality, which was something of a puzzle to her, began to clear.
+
+It had its origin in nothing more substantial than his vanity; which
+was tickled by the opportunity of talking to a man who, with some
+pretensions to gentility, could be patronised. A little, too, he
+thought of the figure he had made the night before. It was possible
+that the stranger had been unfavourably impressed. That impression the
+Vicomte thought he must remove, and to that end he laboured, after his
+manner, to be courteous to his guest. But as his talk consisted, and
+had long consisted, of little but sneers and gibes at the companions
+of his fallen fortunes, his civility found its only vent in this
+direction.
+
+Des Ageaux indeed would gladly have had less of his civility. More
+than once--though he was not fastidious--his cheek coloured with
+shame, and willingly would he, had that been all, have told the
+Vicomte what he thought of his witticisms. But he had his cards
+sorted, his course arranged. Circumstances had played for him in the
+dangerous game on which he was embarked, and he would have been
+unworldly indeed had he been willing to cast away, for a point of
+feeling--he who was no knight-errant--the advantages he had gained.
+
+Not that he did not feel strongly for the two whose affection for one
+another touched him. Roger's deformity appealed to him, for he fancied
+that he detected in the lad a spirit which those who knew him better,
+but knew only his gentler side, did not suspect. And the girl who had
+grown from child to woman in the rustic stillness of this moated
+house--that once had rung with the tread of armed heels and been gay
+with festive robes and tourneys, but now was sinking fast into a
+lonely farmstead--she too awakened some interest in the man of the
+world, who smiled to find himself embedded for the time in a life so
+alien from his every-day experiences. Concern he felt for the one and
+the other; but such concern as weighed light in the balance against
+the interests he held in his hands, or even against his own selfish
+interest.
+
+It soon appeared that the Vicomte had another motive for hospitality,
+in the desire to dazzle the stranger by the splendours of his eldest
+daughter, on whom he continued to harp. "There is still one of us," he
+said with senile vanity--"I doubt if, from the specimens you have
+seen, you will believe it--who is not entirely as God made her! Thank
+the Lord for that! Who is neither clod nor clout, sir, but has as much
+fashion as goes to the making of a modest gentlewoman."
+
+His guest looked gravely at him. "I look forward much to seeing her,
+M. le Vicomte!" he said for the tenth time.
+
+"Ay, you may say so!" the Vicomte answered. "For in her you will see a
+Villeneuve, and the last of the line!" with a scowl at Roger. "Neither
+a lout with his boots full of hay-seeds--pah! nor a sulky girl with as
+much manner as God gave her, and not a jot to it! Nice company I have,
+M. des Voeux," he continued bitterly. "Did you say des Voeux--I never
+heard the name?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Vicomte."
+
+"Nice company, I say, for a Villeneuve in his old age! What think you
+of it? Before Coutras, where was an end of the good old days, and the
+good old gentrice----"
+
+"You were at Coutras?"
+
+"Ay, to my cost, a curse on it! But before Coutras, I say, I had at
+least their mother, who was a Monclar from Rouergue. She had at any
+rate a tongue and could speak. And my daughter the Abbess takes after
+her, though may-be more after me, as you will think when you see her.
+She will be here, she says, to-morrow, for a night or two." This he
+told for the fifth time that evening.
+
+"I am looking forward to seeing her!" the guest repeated gravely--also
+for the fifth time.
+
+But the Vicomte could not have enough of boasting, which was doubly
+sweet to him; first because it exalted the absent, and secondly
+because it humiliated those who were present. "Thank God, she at least
+is not as God made her!" he said again, pleased with the phrase. "At
+Court last year the King noticed her, and swore she was a true
+Villeneuve, and a most perfect lady without fault or blemish!"
+
+"His Majesty is certainly a judge," the listener responded, the
+twinkle in his eye more apparent than usual.
+
+"To be sure!" the old man returned. "Who better? But, for the matter
+of that, I am a judge myself. My daughter--for there is only one
+worthy of the name"--with a withering glance at poor Bonne--"is not
+hand in glove with every base-born wench about the place, trapesing to
+a christening in a stable as readily as if the child were a king's
+son! Ay, and as I am a Catholic, praying beside old hags' beds till
+the lazy priest at the chapel has nought left to do for his month's
+meal! Pah!"
+
+"Ranks are no doubt of God's invention," des Voeux said with his eyes
+on the table.
+
+The Vicomte struck the board angrily. "Who doubts it?" he exclaimed.
+"Of God's invention, sir? Of course they are!"
+
+"But I take it that they exist, in part at least," des Ageaux
+answered, "as a provision for the exercise of charity; and of----" he
+hesitated, unwilling--he read the gathering storm on the Vicomte's
+brow--to give offence; and, by a coincidence, he was saved from the
+necessity. As he paused the door flew open, and a serving-man, not one
+of the two who had waited on the table, but an uncouth creature,
+shaggy and field-stained, appeared gesticulating on the threshold. He
+was out of breath, apparently he could not speak; while the gust of
+wind which entered with him, by blowing sideways the long, straggling
+flames of the candles, and deepening the gloom of the ill-lit room,
+made it impossible to discern his face.
+
+The Vicomte rose. They all rose. "What does this mean?" he cried in a
+rage. "What is it?"
+
+"There's a party ringing at the gate, my lord, and--and won't take
+no!" the man gasped. "A half-dozen of spears, and others on foot and
+horse. A body of them. Solomon sent me to ask what's to do, and if he
+shall open."
+
+"There's a petticoat with them," a second voice answered. The speaker
+showed his face over the other's shoulder.
+
+"Imbeciles!" the Vicomte retorted, fired with rage. "It is your lady
+the Abbess come a day before her time! It is my daughter and you stay
+her at the door!"
+
+"It is not my lady," the second man answered timidly. "It might be
+some of her company, my lord, but 'tis not her. And Solomon----"
+
+"Well? Well?"
+
+"Says that they are not her people, my lord."
+
+The Vicomte groaned. "If I had a son worthy the name!" he said, and
+then he broke off, looking foolish. For Roger had left the room and
+des Ageaux also. They had slipped by the men while the Vicomte
+questioned them, and run out through the hall and to the gate--not
+unarmed. The Vicomte, seeing this, bade the men follow them; and when
+these too had vanished, and only four or five frightened women who had
+crowded into the room at the first alarm remained, he began to fumble
+with his sword, and to add to the confusion by calling fussily for
+this and that, and to bring him his arquebus, and not to open--not
+to open till he came! In truth years had worked imperceptibly on
+him. His nerves, like many things about him, were not what they had
+been--before Coutras. And he was still giving contrary directions, and
+scolding the women, and bidding them make way for him--since it seemed
+there was not a man to go to the gate but himself--when approaching
+voices broke on his ear and silenced him. An instant later one or two
+men appeared among the women in the doorway, and the little crowd fell
+back in wonder, to make room for a low dark man, bareheaded and
+breathing hard, with disordered hair and glittering eyes, who,
+thrusting the women to either side, cried--not once, but again, and
+yet again:--
+
+"Room! Room for the Countess of Rochechouart! Way for the Countess!"
+
+At the third repetition of this--which he seemed to say
+mechanically--his eyes took in the scene, the table, the room, and the
+waiting figure of the scandalized Vicomte, and his voice broke.
+"Saved!" he cried, flinging up his arms, and reeling slightly as if he
+would fall. "My lady is saved! Saved!"
+
+And then, behind the low, dark man, who, it was plain, was almost
+beside himself, the Vicomte saw the white face and shrinking form of a
+small, slight girl little more than a child, whose eyes were like no
+eyes but a haunted hare's, so large and bright and affrighted were
+they.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                             THE DILEMMA.
+
+
+Sheer amazement held the Vicomte silent. The Countess of Rochechouart,
+of the proud house of Longueville, that in those days yielded place to
+scarce a house in France--the Countess of Rochechouart to be seeking
+admittance at his door! And at this hour of the night! She, who was of
+the greatest heiresses of France, whose hand was weighted with a
+hundred manors, and of whose acquaintance the Abbess had lately
+boasted as a thing of which even a Villeneuve might be proud, she to
+be knocking at his gate in the dark hours! And seeking help! The
+Countess--his head went round. He was still gazing speechless with
+surprise when the short dark man who had entered with her fell on his
+knees before the girl, and seizing her hand mumbled upon it, wept on
+it, babbled over it, heedless alike of the crowd of gazers who pressed
+upon him, and of the master of the house, who stared aghast.
+
+The Vicomte's amazement began at that to give place to perplexity. The
+Abbess, had she been here, would have known how to entertain such a
+guest. But Bonne and Roger--they were naught. Yet he must do
+something. He found his voice. "If I have, indeed," he said, for he
+was still suspicious of a trick, so forlorn and childish seemed the
+figure before him--"if I have indeed the honour," he repeated stiffly,
+"to address the Countess of Rochechouart, I--I bid her welcome to my
+poor house."
+
+"I am Mademoiselle de Rochechouart," the girl murmured, speaking
+faintly. "I thank you."
+
+It was apparent that she could say no more. Her face was scratched and
+bleeding, her hair was loose, her riding-dress, stained to the throat
+with dirt, was torn in more places than one. There were other signs
+that, frail as she was, she had ridden hard and desperately; ridden to
+the end of her strength.
+
+But the Vicomte thought, not of her, but of himself, as was his
+custom; not of her plight, but of the figure he was making before his
+people, who stared open-mouthed at the unwonted scene. "Time was,
+mademoiselle," he replied, drawing himself up, "before Coutras, when I
+could have offered you"--with a bow--"a more fitting hospitality. Time
+was when the house of Villeneuve, which has entertained four kings,
+could have afforded a more fitting reception to--hem--to beauty in
+distress. But that was before Coutras. Since Coutras, destined to be
+the grave of the nobility of France--I---- What is it?"
+
+"I think she is faint, sir," Bonne murmured timidly. She, with a
+woman's eye, saw that the Countess was swaying, and she sprang forward
+to support her. "She is ill, sir," she continued hurriedly and with
+greater boldness. "Permit me, I beg you, sir, to take her to my room.
+She will be better there--until we can arrange a chamber." Already the
+child, half-fainting, was clinging to her, and but for her must have
+fallen.
+
+The Vicomte, taken aback by his daughter's presumption, could only
+stare. "If this be so," he said grudgingly, "certainly! But I don't
+understand. How comes all this about? Eh? How----" But he found that
+the girl did not heed him, and he turned and addressed the attendant.
+"How, you, sir, comes your mistress here? And in this plight?"
+
+But the dark man, as deaf as his mistress to the question, had turned
+to follow her. He seemed indeed to have no more notion of being parted
+from her than a dog which finds itself alone with its master among
+strangers. Bonne at the door discovered his presence at her elbow, and
+paused in some embarrassment. The Vicomte saw the pause, and glad to
+do something--he had just ordered off the women with fleas in their
+ears--he called loudly to the man to stand back. "Stand back, fellow,"
+he repeated. "The Countess will be well tended. Let two of the women
+be sent to her to do what is needful--as is becoming."
+
+But the Countess, faint as she was, heard and spoke. "He is my
+foster-father," she murmured without turning her head. "If he may lie
+at my door he will heed no one."
+
+Bonne, whose arm was round her, nodded a cheerful assent, and,
+followed by two of the women, the three disappeared in the direction
+of the girl's chamber. The Vicomte, left to digest the matter, sniffed
+once or twice with a face of amazement, and then awoke to the fact
+that Roger and his guest were still absent. Fortunately, before he had
+done more than give vent to peevish complaints, they entered.
+
+He waited, with his eyes on the door. To his surprise no one followed
+them--no steward, no attendant. "Well?" he cried, withering them with
+his glance. "What does this mean? Where are the others? Is there no
+one in the Countess's train of a condition to be presented to me?
+Or how comes it that you have not brought him, booby,"--this to
+Roger--"to give me some account of these strange proceedings? Am
+I the last to be told who come into my house? But God knows, since
+Coutras----"
+
+"There is no one, M. le Vicomte," the Lieutenant answered.
+
+The Vicomte glared at him. "How? No one?" he retorted pompously.
+"Impossible! Do you suppose that the Countess of Rochechouart travels
+with no larger attendance than a poor gentleman of Brittany? You mean,
+sir, I take it, that there is no one of condition, though that is so
+contrary to rule that I can hardly believe it. A countess of
+Rochechouart and no gentlemen in her train! She should travel with
+four at the least!"
+
+"I only know that there is no one, sir."
+
+"I do not understand!"
+
+"Neither do we," the Lieutenant of Périgord returned, somewhat out of
+patience. "The matter is as dark to us as it is to you, sir. It is
+plain that the Countess has experienced a serious adventure, but
+beyond that we know nothing, since neither she nor her attendant has
+spoken. He seems beside himself with joy and she with fatigue."
+
+"But the spears?" his host retorted sharply. "The men on horse and
+foot who alarmed the porter?"
+
+"They vanished as soon as we opened. One I did delay a moment, and
+learned--though he was in haste to be gone--that they fell in with the
+lady a half mile from here. She was then in the plight in which you
+have seen her, and it was at her attendant's prayer, who informed them
+of her quality, that they escorted her to this house. They learned no
+more from him than that the lady's train had been attacked in the
+woods between this and Vlaye, and that the man got his mistress away
+and hid with her, and was making for this house when the horsemen met
+them."
+
+"Incredible!" the Vicomte exclaimed, stalking across the hearth and
+returning in excitement. "Since Coutras I have heard no such thing! A
+Countess of Rochechouart attacked on the road and put to it like a
+common herdgirl. It must be the work of those cursed--peasants! It
+must be so! But, then, the men who brought her to the door and
+vanished again, who are they? Travellers are not so common in these
+parts. You might journey three days before you fell in with a body of
+men-at-arms to protect you on your way."
+
+"True," des Ageaux answered. "But I learned no more from them."
+
+"And you, Master Booby?" the Vicomte said, addressing Roger with his
+usual sarcasm. "You asked nothing, I suppose?"
+
+"I was busied about the Countess," the lad muttered. "It was dark, and
+I heard no more than their voices."
+
+"Then it was only you who saw them?" the Vicomte exclaimed, turning
+again to des Ageaux. "Did you not notice what manner of men they were,
+sir, how many, and of what class? Strange that they should leave a
+warm house-door at this hour! Did you form no opinion of them? Were
+they"--he brought out the word with an effort--"Crocans, think you?"
+
+The Lieutenant replied that he took them for the armed attendants of a
+gentleman passing that way, and the Vicomte, though ill-content with
+the answer, was obliged to put up with it. "Yet it seems passing
+strange to me," he retorted, "that you did not think their drawing off
+a little beside the ordinary. And who travels at this hour of the
+night, I would like to know?"
+
+The Lieutenant made no answer, and the Vicomte too fell silent. From
+time to time serving-women had passed through the room--for, after the
+awkward fashion of those days, the passage to the inner apartments was
+through the dining-hall--some with lights, and some with fire in pans.
+The draught from the closing doors had more than once threatened to
+extinguish the flickering candles. Such flittings produced an air of
+bustle and a hum of preparation long unknown in that house; but they
+were certainly more to the taste of the menials than the master. At
+each interruption the Vicomte pished and pshawed, glaring as if he
+would slay the offender. But the women, emboldened by the event and
+the presence of strangers, did not heed him, and after some minutes of
+silent sufferance his patience came to an end.
+
+"Go you," he cried to Roger, "and bid the girl come to me."
+
+"The Countess, sir?" the lad exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+The Vicomte swore. "No, fool!" he replied. "Your sister! Is she master
+of the house, or am I? Bid her descend this instant and tell me what
+is forward and what she has learned."
+
+Roger, with secret reluctance, obeyed, and his father, sorely
+fretting, awaited his return. Two minutes elapsed, and three. Seldom
+stirring abroad, the Vicomte had, in spite of all his talk about
+Coutras, an overweening sense of his own importance, and he was about
+to break out in fury when Bonne at length entered. She was followed by
+Roger.
+
+It was clear at a glance that the girl was frightened; less clear that
+mixed with her fear was another emotion. "Well," the Vicomte cried,
+throwing himself back in his great chair and fixing her with his angry
+eyes. "What is it? Am I to know nothing--in my own house?"
+
+Bonne controlled herself by an effort. "On the contrary, sir, there is
+that which I think you should know," she murmured. "The Countess has
+told me the story. She was attacked on the road, some of her people
+she fears were killed, and all were scattered. She herself escaped
+barely with her life."
+
+The Vicomte stared. "Where?" he said. "Where was it?"
+
+"An hour from here, sir."
+
+"Towards Vlaye?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And she barely escaped?"
+
+"You saw her, sir."
+
+"And who--who does she say dared to commit this outrage?"
+
+Bonne did not answer. Her eyes sought her brother's and sank again.
+She trembled.
+
+The Vicomte, though not the keenest of observers, detected her
+embarrassment. He fancied that he knew its origin, and the cause of
+her hesitation. In a voice of triumph, "Ay, who?" he replied. "You
+don't wish to say. But I can tell you. I read it in your face. I can
+tell you, disobedient wench, who alone would be guilty of such an
+outrage. Those gutter-sweepings"--his face swelled with rage--"made up
+of broken lacqueys and ploughboys, whom they call Crocans! Eh, girl,
+is it not so?" he continued savagely. "Am I not right?"
+
+"No, sir," she murmured without daring to look up.
+
+His face fell. "No?" he repeated. "No? But I don't believe you! Who
+then? Don't lie to me! Who then?" He rapped the table before him.
+
+"The Captain of Vlaye," she whispered.
+
+The Vicomte sank back in his chair. "Impossible!" he cried. Then in a
+much lower tone: "Impossible!" he repeated. "You dream, girl. M. de
+Vlaye has done some things not quite--not regular. But--but in cases
+perfectly different. To people of--of no consequence! This cannot be!"
+
+"I fear it is so, sir," she whispered, without raising her eyes. "Nor
+is that--the worst."
+
+The Vicomte clenched his fingers about the arms of his chair and
+nodded the question he could not frame.
+
+"It was with the Abbess, sir--with my sister," Bonne continued in a
+low tone, "that the Countess was to stay the night. I fear that it was
+from her that he learned where and how to beset her."
+
+The Vicomte looked as if he was about to have a fit.
+
+"What?" he cried. "Do you dare, unnatural girl, to assert that your
+sister was privy to this outrage?"
+
+"Heaven forbid, sir!" Bonne answered fervently. "She knew naught of
+it. But----"
+
+"Then why----"
+
+"But it was from her, I fear, that he learned where the child--she is
+little more--could be surprised."
+
+The Vicomte glared at her without speaking. The Lieutenant, who had
+listened, not without admiration of the girl's sense and firmness,
+seized the opening to intervene. "Were it not well, sir," he said, his
+matter-of-fact tone calming the Vicomte's temper, "if mademoiselle
+told us as nearly as possible what she has heard? And, as she has been
+somewhat shaken, perhaps you will permit her to sit down! She will
+then, I think, be able to tell us more quickly what we want."
+
+The Vicomte gave a surly assent, and the Lieutenant himself placed a
+stool for the girl where she could lean upon the table. Her father
+opened his eyes at the attention, but something in des Ageaux's face
+silenced the sneer on his lips, and he waited until Bonne began.
+
+"The Countess lay at Pons last night, sir," she said in a low tone.
+"There the lady who was formerly her _gouvernante_, and still rules
+her household, fell ill. The plague is in Western Poitou, and though
+the Countess would have stayed, her physician insisted that she should
+proceed. Accordingly she left the invalid in his charge and that of
+some of her people, while she herself pursued her way through Jonsac
+and Barbesieux with a train reduced to fourteen persons, of whom eight
+were well armed."
+
+"This is what comes of travelling in such a fashion," the Vicomte said
+contemptuously. "I remember when I never passed the gates without--but
+go on!"
+
+"She now thinks that the _gouvernante's_ food was tampered with. Be
+that as it may, her company passed our ford in the afternoon, and an
+hour later reached the ascent a league this side of Vlaye. They were
+midway on the ascent, when half a dozen shots were fired. Several of
+their horses were struck, and the rest seized by a number of men who
+sprang from the undergrowth. In the panic those who were at the rear
+attempted to turn, but found their retreat cut off. The Countess
+alone, who rode in the middle with her steward, escaped through the
+devotion of a servant, who thrust his horse before the leader of the
+bandits and brought him down. Fulbert, her steward, saw the
+opportunity, seized her rein, and, plunging into the undergrowth,
+reached by good luck the bottom of the hill, and, hidden by the wood,
+gained a start. He knew, however, that her strength would not hold
+out, and at the first sound of pursuit he alighted in a coppice, drove
+on the horses, and crept away with her through the underwood. He hoped
+to take shelter here, but passed the entrance in the darkness and
+walked into the midst of a party of men encamped at the ford. Then
+he thought all lost, deeming them the band that had waylaid the
+Countess----"
+
+"And who were they, if they were not?" the Vicomte asked, unable to
+restrain his curiosity. "Eh? They were camping at the ford?"
+
+"Some riders belonging to the household of the Lieutenant of Périgord,
+sir, on their way to join him in his government. They were so honest
+as to guard the Countess hither----"
+
+"And go again? The good Lord!" the Vicomte cried irritably. "Why?"
+
+"I do not know, sir."
+
+"Go on, then. Why do you break off? But--enough!" The Vicomte looked
+at the other listeners with an air of triumph. "Where is Vlaye in
+this? Because it was within a league of his castle, you put it on him,
+you baggage?"
+
+"No, sir, indeed!" Bonne cried anxiously. "But Fulbert the steward
+knows M. de Vlaye well, and recognised him. He wore a mask, it seems,
+but when his horse fell, the mask slipped, and Fulbert saw his face
+and knew him. Moreover----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"One of the band rode a bald-faced black horse, which the steward saw
+in M. de Vlaye's troop at Angoulême two months back, and to which he
+says he could swear among ten thousand."
+
+The Vicomte swore as one among a large number. But at length, "And
+what is this to do with me?" he fumed. "What is this to me? Time was,
+before Coutras, when I might have been expected to--to keep the roads,
+and stay such things! But now--body of Satan, what is it to me?"
+
+No one spoke, and he looked about him angrily, resenting their
+silence. "What is it?" he snarled. "What are you keeping back?"
+
+"Nothing, sir," Bonne answered.
+
+"Then what would you?"
+
+"If," Bonne ventured desperately, "M. de Vlaye come to-morrow with my
+sister--with the Abbess, sir, as is not unlikely--and find the
+Countess here, will she be safe?"
+
+The Vicomte's mouth opened, and slowly consternation settled upon his
+features. "_Mon Dieu!_" he muttered. "I had not thought of that. But
+here--no, no, he would not dare! He would not dare!"
+
+"He went very far to-day, sir," Bonne objected, gaining courage from
+his face. "So far that he must go farther to ensure himself from the
+consequences."
+
+The Vicomte was silent.
+
+The Lieutenant coughed. "If his object," he said, "be to force a
+marriage with the Countess----"
+
+The Vicomte, with an oath, cut him short. "A marriage?" he said. "A
+marriage? When he and my daughter the Abbess are--but who said aught
+of the kind? Who said aught of a marriage?"
+
+The Lieutenant did not answer, and the Vicomte, after growling in his
+beard, turned to him. "Why," he demanded in a tone that, though
+ungracious, was no longer violent, "why do you say that that was his
+object?"
+
+"Because," the Lieutenant answered, "I happen to know that M. de
+Longueville, who is her guardian, has his hands full. His wife and
+children are prisoners with the Spaniards, and he is moving heaven and
+earth and the court to procure their release. He has no thought to
+spare for the Countess, his cousin; and were she once married, however
+violently, I doubt if he or any would venture to dispute her
+possessions with a Vlaye, whose resources her wealth would treble.
+Such knights-errant," he continued drily, "are not very common, M. le
+Vicomte. Set M. de Vlaye's strength at three hundred men-at-arms----"
+
+"Four!" the Vicomte muttered, despite himself.
+
+"Then double the four--as such a marriage, however effected, would
+double them--and I doubt," with a courteous bow, "if even a Villeneuve
+would find it easy to avenge a wrong!"
+
+The Vicomte fidgeted in his seat. "You seem to know a vast deal about
+it, sir," he said, with ill-feigned contempt.
+
+"I should feel it an honour," the Lieutenant answered politely, "to be
+permitted to join in the defence."
+
+"Defence!" the Vicomte exclaimed, staring at him in astonishment. "You
+go fast, sir! Defence? What do you mean?"
+
+"If M. de Vlaye learn that the Countess has taken refuge here--I fear
+it will come to that."
+
+"Pooh! Impossible! Defence, indeed! What are you dreaming of?"
+
+But the guest continued to look grave, and the Vicomte, after
+muttering incoherently, and drumming on the table with his fingers,
+condescended to ask with a sneer what _he_ would do--in the
+circumstances.
+
+"I should keep her presence from him," des Ageaux answered. "I have no
+right, I know," he continued, in a more conciliatory tone, "to give
+counsel to one of your experience, M. le Vicomte. But I see no choice
+save to do what I suggest, or to pull up the drawbridge."
+
+The Vicomte sat up straight. Pull up the drawbridge? Was he
+dreaming--he who had sat down to sup without a thought of misfortune?
+He with four hundred yards of wall to guard, and some seven pikes to
+hold it--to defy Vlaye and his four hundred ruffians? Body of Satan,
+he was not mad! Defy Vlaye, whom he feared even while he sneered at
+him as an adventurer? Vlaye, in whose star he believed even while he
+sneered. Or would he have dreamed of giving him his daughter? Pull up
+the drawbridge? Never!
+
+"I am not mad," he said coldly. But his hands trembled.
+
+"Then, M. le Vicomte, it remains to keep it from him."
+
+"How? You talk at random," the exasperated man answered. "Can I close
+the mouth of every gossip in the house? Can I cut out every woman's
+tongue, beginning with that girl's? How can I keep out his men, or
+stop their ears over the wine-pot?"
+
+"Could you not admit him only?"
+
+"And proclaim from the housetop," the Vicomte retorted with contempt,
+"that I have something to hide?"
+
+The Lieutenant did not reply at once, and it was plain that he was
+puzzled by this view of the position. "Certainly that has to be borne
+in mind," he said. "You are quite right."
+
+"To be sure it has!" the Vicomte answered brusquely, glad to have the
+opportunity of putting this overzealous adviser in his right place.
+But the satisfaction of triumph faded quickly, and left him face to
+face with the situation. He cursed Vlaye for placing him in the
+dilemma. He cursed the Countess--why could she not have taken refuge
+elsewhere? Last of all, he cursed his guest, who, after showing
+himself offensively able to teach him his duty, failed the moment it
+came to finding an expedient.
+
+The solution of the riddle came from a quarter whence--at any rate by
+the Vicomte--it was least expected. "May I say something?" Roger
+ventured timidly.
+
+His father glared at him. "You?" he exclaimed. And then ungraciously,
+"Say on!" he growled.
+
+"We have cut half the grass in the long meadow," the lad answered.
+"And to-morrow we ought to be both cutting and making, while it is
+fine. Last year, as we were short-handed, the women helped. If you
+were to order all but Solomon to the hay-field to-morrow--it is the
+farthest from here, beside the river--there would be no one to talk or
+tell, sir."
+
+Des Ageaux struck his leg in approbation. "The lad has it!" he said.
+"With your permission, M. le Vicomte, what could be better?"
+
+"Better?" the Vicomte retorted, throwing himself back in his chair.
+"What? I am to open my gate with my own hands?"
+
+"Solomon would open. And he can be trusted."
+
+"Receive my daughter without man or maid?" the Vicomte cried. "Show
+myself to strangers without my people? Appear like one of the
+base-born beggarly ploughmen with mud in their veins, with whom you
+love to mix? What mean you, sirrah, by such a suggestion? Shame on
+you, unnatural fool!"
+
+"But, M. le Vicomte," the Lieutenant remonstrated, "if you will not do
+that----"
+
+"Never! Never!"
+
+"Then," des Ageaux answered, more stiffly, "it remains only to pull up
+the drawbridge. Since, I presume," he continued, his tone taking
+insensibly a note of disdain, "you do not propose to give up the young
+lady, or to turn her from your door."
+
+"Turn her from my door?"
+
+"That being at once to help M. de Vlaye to this marriage, and to drag
+the name of Villeneuve in the mud! But"--breaking off with a bow--"I
+am sure that the honour of the family is safe in your hands, M. le
+Vicomte."
+
+"It is well you said that!" the Vicomte cried, his face purple, his
+hands palsied with rage. "It is well you broke off, sir, or I would
+have proved to you that my honour is safe with me. Body of Satan, am I
+to be preached to by everybody--every brainless lad," he continued,
+prudently diverting his tirade to the head of the unlucky Roger,
+"who chooses to prate before his elders! _Mon Dieu!_ There was a time
+when children sat mute instead of preaching. But that was before
+Coutras!"--bitterly--"when most things came to an end."
+
+This time des Ageaux had the shrewdness to be silent, and he garnered
+the reward of his reticence. The Vicomte, rant as wildly as he might,
+was no fool, though vanity was hourly putting foolish things into his
+mouth. He was not blind--had he not "since Coutras" always on his
+lips?--to the changes which time had wrought in the world, and he knew
+that face to face with his formidable neighbour he was helpless. Nor
+was he in the dark on Vlaye's character. So far the adventurer had
+respected him, and in presence, and at a distance, had maintained an
+observance and a regard that was flattering to the decayed gentleman.
+But the Vicomte had seen the fate of others who crossed the Captain of
+Vlaye. He knew how impotent the law had proved to save them, how slack
+their friends--in a word, how quickly the waters had rolled over them.
+And he was astute enough to see, with all his conceit, that as it had
+been with them, it might be with him, if he stood in M. de Vlaye's
+way.
+
+On the other hand, had he been mean enough to deliver up the Countess,
+he dared not. In the first place, to do so would, at the best, be
+hazardous; she had powerful friends, and whether she escaped or
+married her captor she might not forgive him. In the second place, he
+did not lightly resign the plan, which he had conceived, of uniting
+his favourite daughter to the rising adventurer. True, M. de Vlaye's
+position was anomalous, was precarious. But a day, a bribe, a turn of
+the cards might legalise it and place him high in Court favour. And
+then----
+
+The Vicomte's train of thought ran no farther in silence. With an oath
+and an ill grace he bade them do as they would. "Things," he cried,
+"are come to a pass indeed when guests----"
+
+"A thousand pardons, M. le Vicomte!"
+
+"And children dictate what is to be done and what to be left undone!"
+He looked older as he spoke; more broken and more peevish. "But since
+Coutras the devil has all, I think."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                        THE CAPTAIN OF VLAYE.
+
+
+Danger, that by night sends forth a vanguard of fears, and quells the
+spirits before it delivers the attack, pursues a different course by
+day, seeking to surprise rather than to intimidate. Seldom had June
+sun shone on a fairer scene than that which the lifting of the river
+mists delivered to the eyes of the dwellers in the château on the
+following morning, or on one more fit to raise the despondent courage.
+The tract of meadow land that, enfolded by the river, formed the only
+clear ground about the house lay in breezy sunshine, which patches of
+shadow, flung on the sward by such of the surrounding trees as rose a
+little higher than the ordinary, did but heighten. The woods which
+enclosed this meadow land, here with a long straight wall of oaks,
+there with broken clumps of trees that left to view distant glades and
+alleys, sparkled, where the sun lighted their recesses, with
+unnumbered dew-drops, or with floating gossamers, harbingers of a fair
+day. The occasional caw of a rook flying fieldward over the open, or
+the low, steady coo of the pigeons in the great stone cote beside the
+gate, added the last touch of peace to the scene; a scene so innocent
+that it forbade the notion of danger and rendered it hard to believe
+that amid surroundings like these, and under the same sky of blue,
+man's passions were, in parts not distant, turning an earthly heaven
+to a hell.
+
+Access to these meadows was by a sled-road, which, starting from the
+great gate, wound round the wall of the courtyard, and then, turning
+its back on the house, passed by a small stone bridge over the brook
+which had once supplied the moat. From the bridge the track ran across
+the meadows to the abandoned farms which stood on the river bank half
+a mile from the château. The only building among these which retained
+a roof was a long wooden barn, still used to contain waste fodder and
+the like.
+
+It was from this bridge, a narrow span of stone, that Bonne, the
+following morning, gazed on the scene, her hand raised to shade her
+eyes from the sun. The whole of the Vicomte's household, with the
+exception of a deaf cook and of Solomon, who could be trusted, were
+gone to the hay-field; some with delight, as welcoming any change, and
+some with whispers and surmises. Thence their shrill voices and
+laughter were borne by the light breeze to the girl's ears.
+
+Nothing had been heard of the Countess's train, and her concealment
+during the hours of danger had perplexed both the Vicomte and his
+advisers. His pride would not permit him to make her privy to the
+coming visit, or the precautions which it rendered needful. Yet
+without acknowledging his inability to protect her, it was not easy to
+confine her to one room. For, with the elasticity of youth, she had
+risen little the worse for her adventures.
+
+The council sat long, and in the end the better course seemed to be to
+invite her to the hay-field. As it fell out, a small matter gave a
+natural turn to the proposal. Her riding-dress--and more of her dress
+than that--was so stained and torn as to be unwearable. And Bonne
+could not help her, for the child, though perfectly formed, and of a
+soft prettiness, was cast in a smaller mould. Here, then, was a
+Countess without so much as a stocking, had not Bonne thought of a
+little waiting-girl of about the same shape and size. This girl's
+holiday attire was borrowed, and found to be a charming fit--at least
+in the eyes of Roger. For the lad, because the Countess was shy, had
+become, after a sort, her protector.
+
+The child's timidity was at standing odds with her rank, and on first
+descending in this dress she had been on the point of tears, as
+infants cry when they think themselves the objects of ridicule. A very
+little and she had fled. But a moment later, whether she read
+something that was not ridicule in the lad's eyes, as she walked up
+and down the terrace, or youth stirred in her and raised a childish
+pleasure in the masquerade, she preened herself, blushing, and
+presently she was showing herself off. So that at the first word she
+fell in with the notion of completing her make-believe by spending the
+day in the hay.
+
+Fortunately, Fulbert, the steward, who attended her like a dog, and
+like a dog glared suspicion on all who approached her, raised no
+objection. And about three hours before noon the move was made. Bonne
+had gone with Mademoiselle as far as this bridge, where she now stood,
+and thence had sent her forward with Roger and Fulbert on the plea
+that she must herself attend to household cares. Nevertheless, as the
+three receded in the sun's eye, she lingered awhile looking
+thoughtfully after them.
+
+The dainty creature, tripping in her queer travesty between her
+foster-father and Roger's misshapen form, showed like a fairy between
+two gnomes. Bonne watched and smiled, and presently the smile became a
+tear, for Roger's sake. She had other and more pressing cares, other
+and heavier burdens this morning; but her heart was warm for him. She
+had been mother as well as sister to him, and the reflection that his
+deformity--once she had heard a peasant call him goblin--would
+probably for ever set him apart and deprive him of the joys of manhood
+touched her with grief as she stood.
+
+The tear was still on her lid when she heard a step behind her, turned
+and saw des Ageaux--to her des Voeux. He read trouble in her clear,
+youthful face, fancied she was in fear, and paused to reassure her.
+"Why so sad, mademoiselle," he asked, "when she"--with a good-humoured
+nod in the direction of the Countess--"who has so much more to fear,
+trips along gaily? She is another being to-day."
+
+"I have others to fear for," she replied.
+
+"Your brother?"
+
+She fancied that he was about to press her to bring him to Charles,
+and to change the subject she avowed her trouble. Why, heaven knows;
+for though her presence of mind the previous evening had won a meed of
+admiration from him, he had made no sign.
+
+"I was not thinking of him," she confessed. "I was thinking of Roger.
+I was thinking how sad it is--for him."
+
+He understood her. "You make too much of it," he said lightly. "He has
+health and strength, and a good spirit when your father is not
+present. His arm is long, and will always keep his head. Have you
+never heard what M. de Gourdon, Governor of the March, who is--who is
+like your brother, you know--once said of himself? 'My back?' quoth he
+to one who mentioned it. 'My friends mind it not, and my enemies have
+never seen it!'"
+
+She flushed and a light came into her eyes. "Oh, brave!" she cried.
+"Brave! And you think that Roger----"
+
+"I think that Roger may some day make himself feared. And he who is
+feared," the Lieutenant continued, with a half cynical, half whimsical
+smile, "has ever love on his other hand--as surely as dog follows the
+hand that feeds it."
+
+The words had barely left his lips when a wolf-hound, whose approach
+they had not noticed, darted upon them, and, leaping up at the
+Lieutenant's face, nearly overthrew him. Bonne recoiled, and with a
+cry looked round for help. Then she perceived that it was with joy,
+not with rage, that the dog was beside himself; for again and again,
+with sharp shrill cries of pleasure, it leapt on the Lieutenant,
+striving to lick his hands, his face, his hair. In vain he bade it
+"Down! Down, dog!" In vain he struck at it. It set its paws against
+his breast, and though often repulsed, as often with slobbering mouth
+and hanging tongue sought his face.
+
+When he had a little calmed its transports and got it to heel, he
+turned to her, and for once showed an embarrassed countenance. "It is
+a dog," he said, "a dog of mine that has followed me."
+
+"I see that," she replied, smiling with something of mischief in her
+looks.
+
+"It must have followed me----"
+
+"A full mile this morning," she said, stooping and patting the hound,
+which, with a dubious condescension, permitted the greeting. "It is
+both fed and dry. And its name is----"
+
+He looked at her, but did not answer.
+
+"Does this often happen to you?" she continued, feeling on a sudden a
+strange freedom with him. "To talk of dogs and they appear? Have you
+the habit when your horse falls lame of tying your dog to a tree, and
+placing a sufficiency of food and water by it to last it two days?"
+And then, when he did not answer her, "Who are you, M. des Voeux?" she
+said in a different tone. "Whence do you come, and what is your
+business?"
+
+"Have I not told you," he answered, "that I wish to communicate
+through your brother with the Crocans? That is my business."
+
+"But you did not know when you came to us that I had a brother," she
+replied, "or that he had joined the Crocans, or that we were like to
+be in these straits. So that you did not come for that. Why did you
+come?" confronting him with clear eyes. "Are we to count you friend or
+enemy? Be frank with me and I will be frank with you."
+
+He looked at her with the first gleam of admiration in his eyes. But
+he hesitated. In the candour of a young girl who, laying aside
+coquetry and advantage, speaks to a man as to a comrade there lies a
+charm new to him who has not known a sister; more new to him,
+more surprising to him whose wont has lain among the women of a
+court--women whose light lives and fickle ambitions mark them of those
+who are but just freed from the seraglio. He smiled at her, openly
+acknowledging by his silence and his air that he had a secret;
+acknowledging also, and in the same way, that he held her equal. But
+he shook his head. "In a little time I will be frank with you,
+mademoiselle," he said. "It is true I have a secret, and at this
+moment I cannot tell it safely."
+
+"You do not trust me?"
+
+"I trust no one at this moment," he answered steadily.
+
+It was not the answer she expected. She had thought he would quibble.
+She was impressed by his firmness, but she did not betray the feeling.
+"Good!" she said, with the least possible lifting of her head. "Then
+you must not expect to be trusted, or that I shall bring you to my
+brother."
+
+"But you promised, mademoiselle."
+
+"That I would do so when I could do so--safely," she retorted with
+mischievous emphasis. "It is your own word, sir, and I shall not feel
+that I can do so--safely--until I learn who you are. I suppose if my
+brother were here you would tell him?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+Her colour rose. "You would tell him, and you will not tell me!" she
+cried indignantly.
+
+"Now you are angry," he replied smiling. "How can I appease you?"
+
+She was not really angry. But she turned on her heel, willing to let
+him think it. "By hiding yourself until this is over," she answered.
+And leaving him standing on the bridge, where he had found her,
+she made her way back to the house, where the only man left was
+Solomon in his hutch beside the gate. He was an old servant, a
+garrulous veteran of high renown for the enormous fables he had ever
+on his lips--particularly when the Vicomte reverted to the greatness
+of the house before Coutras. Mademoiselle as she entered paused to
+speak to him. "Have you seen a strange dog, Solomon?" she asked.
+
+"This morning, my lady?" he exclaimed in his shrill voice. "Strange
+dog? No, not I! Has one frightened you? Dog? Few dogs I see these sad
+days," he continued, with a gesture scornful of the present. "Dogs,
+indeed? Times were when we had packs for everything, for boars, and
+wolves, and deer, and hares, and vermin, and"--pausing in sheer
+inability to think of any other possible pack--"ay, each a pack, and
+more to them than I could ever count, or the huntsman either!"
+
+"Yes, I know, Solomon. I have heard you say so at least. But you have
+not seen a strange dog this morning?"
+
+"The morn! No, no, my lady! But last night I mind one--was't a
+deer-hound?"
+
+"Yes, a deer-hound."
+
+"Well, then, I can tell you," with a mysterious nod, "and no one else.
+It was with the riders who brought the young lady. But I'm mum,"
+winking. "Not a word will they get out of me. Secrets? Ay, I'm the man
+can keep a secret. Why, I remember, talking of secrets and lives--and
+often they are all one----"
+
+"But what became of the deer-hound?" she asked, ruthlessly cutting him
+short.
+
+"Became of the dog?"--more shrilly than usual--he was a little hurt.
+"Is that all you want? It went with them as brought it, I do suppose.
+It didn't stop, anywise. But as I was saying about secrets--the
+secrets I have kept in old days--when there was no family had so many
+as ours----"
+
+But she was gone. She had discovered what she wanted. And she was
+midway across the courtyard when the shrill sound of a hawk-whistle
+caught her ear. Turning she went through the gate again, and
+listened--not without a nervous feeling. Presently she could
+distinguish the dull tramp of a number of horses moving on the sward,
+the gay jingle of bit and spur, and mingled with these sounds the
+voices of a number of persons talking at their ease.
+
+Warmly as the sun shone, she was aware of a shiver; of a presentiment
+that gripped and chilled her. Whatever it portended, however, whatever
+misfortune was in the air, the risk could not now be evaded. Already
+bright patches of moving colour glanced among the trees at the end of
+the approach, and steel points glittered amid the foliage, and
+feathers waved gaily above the undergrowth. She had barely time to
+tell Solomon to run and apprise her father of the arrival, when the
+head of the cavalcade wheeled, talking and laughing, into the avenue,
+and her sister, who rode in the van by the side of M. de Vlaye, espied
+her standing before the gate and waved a greeting.
+
+Behind the Abbess rode a couple of women, one in the lay costume,
+liberally interpreted, of her order, the other of the world confessed;
+following close on their heels half a dozen horsemen completed the
+first party. The young Abbess bore a hooded hawk on her wrist, and the
+tinkle of its light silver bells mingled with the ripple of her voice
+as she approached, while two or three pairs of coupled hounds ran at
+her horse's heels. A little behind, separated from this select company
+by an interval of two score yards, followed the main body, a troop of
+some forty horse, in steel caps and corslets, with long swords
+swinging, and pistols in their holsters.
+
+A more picturesque or more gallant company, as they swept by threes
+and fours into sight between the two grey pillars and rode towards the
+house under sun and shade, or a band that moved with a lordlier air,
+it had been hard to find, even in those days of show and pageantry,
+when men wore their fortunes on their backs. The Captain of Vlaye,
+stooping his sinewy figure to his companion, well became a horse that
+moved as he moved, and caracoled because he allowed it. His dark, keen
+face would have been as handsome as his form but for a blemish. In
+some skirmish of his youth he had lost the sight of an eye, and the
+blind orb gave his face a hard look which, so his enemies said,
+brought it into consonance with his character. He wore upturned
+moustaches without a beard, therein departing from the mode of the
+day. But his hunting-dress of white doeskin, with a fawn hat and belt,
+was in the fashion, and his horse's trappings shone almost as fine as
+the riding-dress of green and silver which set off his companion's
+tall figure and haughty face. In first youth a nose, too like her
+father's, and something over large in Odette de Villeneuve's frame,
+had foreshadowed charms not of the most feminine or the first order.
+But three years had supplied the carriage and the ripened and fuller
+contours that made her what she now was. To-day, if it pleased her to
+have at her beck one whose will was law, and whose stern manners
+invited few to intimacy--and in truth her infatuation for the
+successful adventurer knew no limits--he on his side found his account
+in parading, where he went, a woman whose beauty exceeded even her
+birth, and fell little short of her pride.
+
+And she was content; she at least aimed at no more than setting on a
+safer basis the power she looked to share. It was she who, ignorant
+that her brother had joined them, had mentioned to her sister Vlaye's
+plan of suppressing the Crocans. That he had any other plan, that his
+views rose higher than a union with herself, that he hoped by a bold
+and secret stroke not only to secure what he had gained but to treble
+his resources--that his ambition, passing by a Villeneuve, dared to
+dream of an alliance with the ducal house of Longueville--of these
+things she had, as yet, no inkling. Not a jot, not a tittle. Nor was
+she likely to believe in their existence, save on evidence the
+clearest and most overwhelming.
+
+Bonne knew more. She knew these things; and, as she went forward to
+meet the party, and after greeting her sister turned to her cavalier,
+the word "Welcome" stuck in her throat. She was conscious that her
+cheek grew a shade paler as she forced the word, that her knees shook.
+Her fear was that he would read the signs.
+
+Ordinarily he would not have remarked them; partly because he was
+inured to meeting cowed looks, and partly because a careless
+scorn--masked where the Vicomte was concerned by a veneer of
+respect--was all to which he ever treated the Abbess's impoverished
+family. Crook-backed brother, tongue-tied sister, and the other fool,
+whose restive dislike had sometimes amused him--he held them all in
+equal and supreme contempt. But to-day he had his reasons for noting
+the girl more particularly; and the shadow of ill-temper that darkened
+his face lifted as her timid eye and fluttering colour confirmed his
+surmises.
+
+"I thank you, I will not alight," he replied. "Your father is coming
+to the gate? M. le Vicomte is too kind, mademoiselle. But that being
+so, I will await him here."
+
+The Abbess, with an air of patronage, touched Bonne's hair with the
+tip of her riding-switch. "Child, did you sleep in your clothes last
+night?" she said. "Or are you making hay with the kitchen-maids? See
+her blush, M. de Vlaye! What would you give me if I could blush as
+naïvely?" And her eyes rallied him, seeking a compliment in his. "But
+Abbesses who have been to Court----"
+
+"Carry a court wherever they go," he replied. But his look did not
+leave Bonne's face. The Abbess's women and the rest of the company had
+drawn rein out of earshot, their horses making long necks that they
+might reach the grass, or poking their heads to crop a tender shoot.
+"I cannot alight," he continued, "for we are on an adventure,
+mademoiselle. I might almost say a pursuit."
+
+"Do you know, child," her sister chimed in, "that Mademoiselle de
+Rochechouart never came to me last night? But you know nothing
+here--even, I daresay, that I expected her. How should you? You might
+as well live in a hole in the ground."
+
+"She never came?" Bonne faltered, for the sake of saying something.
+The blush had subsided, leaving her paler than before.
+
+"No, did I not say so? And she has not arrived today," the Abbess
+continued, flicking her horse's mane with her jewelled switch. "But
+some of her people were in by daylight this morning--from Heaven knows
+where--some hiding-place in the woods, I believe--making such a to-do
+as you would not credit. If they are to be believed, they were
+attacked near nightfall by the Crocans----"
+
+"By the Crocans," M. de Vlaye repeated, nodding darkly at Bonne. He
+knew more than the Abbess knew of Charles's desperate venture.
+
+"And M. de Vlaye," the Abbess continued, speaking in the negligent
+fashion, a trifle distant, in which she always addressed her family in
+his presence, "has most kindly sent out parties in search of her.
+Moreover, as I came this way on the same errand, he fell in with me,
+and came on--more, I believe, for her sake than mine"--with a look
+that called for contradiction--"to make inquiries in this direction.
+But on the way--but here is my father. Good morning, sir. M. de
+Vlaye----"
+
+"Has been waiting some time, I fear," the Vicomte said hurriedly. He,
+too, was not free from embarrassment, but he hid it with fair success.
+"Why do you not alight and enter, my dear?"
+
+"Because we have business, by your leave, sir," Vlaye answered, his
+politeness scarcely covering an undertone of meaning. And he told in a
+few words--while Bonne stood listening in an agony of suspense--what
+the Abbess had told her. "Fortunately, after I fell in with your
+daughter this morning," he proceeded, "I had news of the Countess. And
+where do you think, M. le Vicomte, we are told that she is?" he
+continued.
+
+Fortunately the Vicomte, whose hands were beginning to tremble,
+and whose colour was mounting to his wrinkled cheek, could not
+immediately find his voice. It was his elder daughter who took on
+herself to answer. "Where do you think, sir?" she cried gaily. "In
+your hay-meadows--so M. de Vlaye says."
+
+"Mademoiselle de Rochechouart? In my hay-meadows?" the Vicomte
+faltered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In my hay-meadows? It cannot be."
+
+"It is so--or so we are told."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                           IN THE HAY-FIELD.
+
+
+The Vicomte gasped; it was evident, it was certain, that M. de Vlaye
+knew all. What was he to say, what to do? While Bonne, though her ear
+hung upon his reply, was conscious only of a desperate search, a wild
+groping, after some method of giving the alarm to those whom it
+concerned--to Charles lurking in the barn beside the water, to the
+Countess making hay for sport and thinking no evil. She had heard of a
+woman who in such a strait sent a feather which put quick wits on the
+alert. But she had no feather, she had nothing, and if she had, at her
+first word of withdrawing M. de Vlaye, she knew, would interpose. At
+last--
+
+"It must be!" the Vicomte exclaimed, taking anew line with some
+presence of mind. "But I would not believe it!"
+
+"It must be? what must be, sir?" his daughter Odette rejoined.
+
+"It must be the Countess!" the Vicomte repeated in a tone of surprise
+and conviction, not ill feigned. He saw that to persist in denying the
+truth--with the hayfield in sight--would not serve, and in the end
+must cover him with confusion. "Dressed in that fashion," he
+continued, "and with no attendant save one rough clown, I--I could not
+credit her story. The Countess of Rochechouart! It seems incredible
+even now!"
+
+"Yes, the Countess of Rochechouart," M. de Vlaye replied in a tone
+which proved that the Vicomte's sudden frankness did not deceive him.
+"With your permission we will wait on her, M. le Vicomte," he
+continued in the same tone, "and as soon as horses can be provided, I
+will escort her to a place of safety."
+
+The Vicomte's face was a study of perplexity. "If you will alight," he
+said, slowly, "I will send and announce to the Countess--if Countess
+she really be--that you are here."
+
+For an instant Bonne's heart stood still. If M. de Vlaye dismounted
+and entered, all things were possible. But the hope was dashed to the
+ground forthwith. "I thank you," Vlaye answered somewhat grimly, "but
+with your permission, M. le Vicomte, to business first. We will go to
+the meadows at once. It is not fitting that the Countess should be
+left for a minute longer than is necessary in a place so ill guarded.
+And, for the matter of that, things lost once are sometimes lost
+twice."
+
+The Vicomte's nose twitched with rage; he was not a meek man. He
+understood M. de Vlaye's insinuation, he knew that M. de Vlaye knew;
+but he was helpless. On the threshold of his own house, on the spot
+where his ancestors' word had been law for generations--or a blow had
+followed the word--he stood impotent before this clever, upstart
+soldier who held him at mercy. And this the Abbess, had her affection
+for him been warm or her nature delicate, must have felt. Without a
+word spoken or a syllable of explanation, she must have perceived that
+she was witnessing her family's shame, and that her part in the scene
+was not with them.
+
+But she, of them all, was the most in the dark, and her thoughts were
+otherwise bent. "You are very fearful for the young lady, M. de
+Vlaye," she said, turning to him, and speaking in a tone of mock
+offence. "I do not remember that you have ever been so over careful
+for me."
+
+He bent his head and muttered something of which her sister caught not
+a word. Then, "But we must not waste time," he continued briskly. "Let
+us--with the Vicomte's permission--to the field! To the field!" And he
+turned his horse as he spoke into the sled-road that led around the
+courtyard wall; and by a gesture he bade his men follow. It was
+evident to Bonne, evident to her father, that he had had a spy on the
+house, and knew where his quarry harboured.
+
+The girl wondered whether by flying through the house and dropping
+from the corner of the garden wall she could even now give the alarm.
+Then M. le Vicomte spoke. "I will come with you," he said in a surly
+tone that betrayed his sense of his position. "The times are indeed
+out of joint, and persons out of their places, but--Solomon, my staff!
+Daughter," to the Abbess, "a hold of your stirrup-leather! It is but a
+step, and I can still walk so far. If the field be unsafe for the
+guest,"--he added grimly--"it is fit the host should share the
+danger."
+
+Bonne could have blessed him for the thought, for his offer bound the
+party to a walking pace, and something might happen. Vlaye, beyond
+doubt, had the same thought. But without breaking openly with the
+Vicomte--which for various reasons he was loth to do--he could not
+reject his company nor outpace him.
+
+He raised no objection, therefore, and in displeased silence the
+Vicomte walked beside his daughter's horse, Bonne accompanying him on
+the other hand. She knew more than he, and had reason to fear more;
+she was almost sick with anxiety. But he, perhaps, suffered more.
+Forced on his own ground to do that which he did not wish to do,
+forced to play a sorry farce, he felt, as he trudged in the van of the
+party, that he walked the captive in a Roman triumph. And he could
+have smitten the Captain of Vlaye across the face.
+
+They passed only too quickly from the shelter of the house to the open
+meadows and the hot sunshine, and so over the stone bridge. Bonne knew
+that at this point they must become visible to the workers in the
+hay-field, and she counted on an interval of a few minutes during
+which the fugitives might take steps to hide themselves, or even to
+get over the river and bury themselves in the woods. She could have
+cried, therefore, when, without apparent order, a party from the
+rear cantered past the leaders and, putting their horses into a sharp
+hand-gallop, preceded them in their advance upon the panic-stricken
+haymakers, in the midst of whom they drew rein in something less than
+a minute.
+
+The Vicomte halted as the meaning of the man[oe]uvre broke upon him,
+and, striking his staff into the ground, he followed them with his
+eyes. "You seem fearful indeed," he growled, his high nose wrinkled
+with anger.
+
+"Things happen very quickly at times," Vlaye answered, ignoring the
+tone.
+
+"Take care, sir, take care!" the Abbess of Vlaye cried, addressing her
+lover. She little thought in her easy insouciance how near the truth
+she was treading. "If you show yourself so very anxious for the
+Countess's safety, I warn you I shall grow jealous."
+
+"You have seen her," M. de Vlaye answered in a low tone, meant only
+for her ear; and he hung slightly towards her. "You know how little
+cause you have to fear."
+
+"Fear?" the Abbess retorted rather sharply. "Know, sir," with a quick
+defiant glance, "that I fear no one!"
+
+Apparently the handful of riders who had preceded the main body had no
+order but to stand guard over the workers. For having halted in the
+midst of the startled servants, who gazed on them in stupefaction,
+they remained motionless in their saddles. Meanwhile the Vicomte, with
+a surly face, was drawing slowly up to them. When no more than thirty
+or forty paces divided the two parties, the leader of the van wheeled
+about, and trotting to M. de Vlaye's side, saluted him.
+
+"I do not see them, my lord," he muttered in a low tone.
+
+The captain of Vlaye reined in his horse, and sitting at ease, cast an
+eagle glance over the terrified haymakers, who had instinctively
+fallen into three or four groups. In one part of the field the hay had
+been got into heaps, but these were of small size, and barely adequate
+to the hiding of a child. Nevertheless, look where he would--and his
+lowering brow bespoke his disappointment--he could detect no one at
+all resembling a Countess. A moment, and his glance passed from the
+open meadow to the ruined buildings, which stood on the brink of the
+stream. It remained fixed on them.
+
+"Search that!" he said in a low tone. And raising his hand he pointed
+to the old barn. "They must be there! Go about it carefully, Ampoule."
+
+The man he addressed turned, and summoning his party, cantered across
+the sward--never so green as after mowing--towards the building. As
+the riders drew near the river, Bonne could command herself no longer.
+She uttered a low groan. Her face bespoke her anguish.
+
+M. de Vlaye did not see her face--it was turned from him--but he
+caught the sound and understood it. "The sun is hot," he said in a
+tone of polite irony. "You find it so, mademoiselle? Doubtless the
+Countess has sought protection from it--in the barn. She will be
+there, take my word for it!"
+
+Bonne made no reply. She could not have spoken for her life; and he
+and they watched, shading their eyes from the sun, she, poor girl,
+with a hand which shook. The horsemen were by this time near the end
+of the building, and all but one proceeded to alight. The rest were in
+the act of delivering up their reins, and one had already vanished
+within the building, when in full view of the company, who were
+watching from the middle of the field, a man sprang from an opening at
+the other end of the barn, reached in three bounds the brink of the
+stream, and even as Vlaye's shout of warning startled the field,
+plunged from the bank, and was lost to sight.
+
+"Holà! Holà!" M. de Vlaye cried in stentorian tones, and, with his
+rowels in his horse's flanks, he was away racing to the spot before
+his followers had taken the alarm. The next moment they were
+thundering emulously at his heels, their charge shaking the earth.
+Even the men who had alighted beside the barn, and as yet knew nothing
+of the evasion, saw that something was wrong, took the alarm, and
+hurried round the building to the river.
+
+"He is there!" cried one, as they pulled up along the bank of the
+stream. And the speaker, in his desire to show his zeal, wheeled his
+horse about so suddenly that he well-nigh knocked down his neighbour.
+
+"No, there! There!" cried another. And "There!" cried a third, as the
+fugitive dived, otter fashion, the willows of the stream affording him
+some protection.
+
+Suddenly M. de Vlaye's voice rang above all. "After him!" he cried.
+"After him, fools, and seize him on the other side!"
+
+In a twinkling three or four of the more courageous forced their
+horses into the stream, and began to swim across. Sixty yards below
+the spot where he had entered the water, the swimmer's head could be
+seen. He was being borne on a current towards a willow-bed which
+projected from the opposite bank, and offered a hiding-place. With
+wild cries those who had not entered the stream followed him along the
+bank, jostling and crossing one another, and marked him here and
+marked him there, while the baying of the excited hounds, restrained
+by their couples, filled the woods beyond the river with the fierce
+music of the chase.
+
+Meantime the Vicomte and his younger daughter remained alone in the
+middle of the meadow; for the Abbess's horse had carried her after the
+others, whether she would or no, with her hawk clinging and screaming
+on her sleeve. Of the two who remained, the Vicomte was in a high
+rage. To be used after this fashion by his guests! To see strangers
+taking the law into their own hands on his land! To be afoot while
+hireling troopers spurned his own clods in his face, and all without
+leave or license, all where he and his forebears had exercised the low
+justice and the high for centuries! It was too much!
+
+"What is it? Who is it?" he cried, adding in his passion oaths and
+execrations then too common. "That is not the Countess! Are they mad?"
+
+"It is Charles," she answered, weeping bitterly. "He was hiding there.
+And he thought that they were in search of him. Oh, they will kill
+him! They will kill him!"
+
+"Charles?" the Vicomte exclaimed, and stood turned to stone.
+"Charles?"
+
+"Yes!" she panted. "And, oh, sir, a word! He is your son, and a word
+may save him! He has done nothing--nothing that they should hunt him
+like a rat!"
+
+But the Vicomte was another man now, moved, wrought on by Heaven knows
+what devils of pride and shame. "My son!" he cried, his rage diverted.
+"That my son? You lie, girl!" coarsely. "He is no son of mine. You
+wander. It is some skulking Crocan they have unharboured. Son of mine?
+Hiding on my land? No! You rave, girl!"
+
+"Oh, sir!" she panted.
+
+"Not a word!" He gripped her wrist fiercely and forced her to silence.
+"Do you hear me? Not a word. He is no son of mine!"
+
+She clung to him, still imploring him, still trying to soften him. But
+he shook her off, roughly, brutally, raising his stick to her; and,
+blinded by her tears, unable to do more, she sank to the ground and
+buried her face, that she might not see, in a mass of hay. He, without
+a word, turned his back on her, on the crowd beside the river, on the
+groups of frightened haymakers--turned his back on all and strode away
+in the direction of the château, with those devils of shame and pride,
+which he had pampered so long, riding him hard. He had drained at last
+the cup of humiliation to the dregs. He had seen his son hunted like a
+beast of vermin on his own land in his presence. And his one desire
+was to be gone. Rage with the cause of this last and worst disgrace
+dried up all natural feeling, all thought for his flesh and blood, all
+pity. He cared not whether his son lived or died. His only longing was
+to escape in his own person; to be gone from the place and scene of
+degradation, to set himself once more in a position, to--to be
+himself!
+
+There are tones of the voice that in the lowest depth inspire
+something of confidence. Bonne, as she lay crushed under the weight of
+her misery, with the merciless sun beating down upon her neck, heard
+such a tone whispering low in her ear.
+
+"Lie still, mademoiselle," it murmured. "Lie still! Where you are, you
+are unseen, and I must speak to you. The man, whoever he is, is taken.
+They have seized him."
+
+She tried to rise. He laid his hand on her shoulder and held her down.
+
+"I must go!" she gasped, still struggling to rise. "I must go! It is
+my brother!"
+
+The Lieutenant--for he it was--muttered, it is to be feared, an oath.
+"Your brother!" he said. "It is your brother, is it? Ah, if you had
+trusted me! But all is not lost! Listen!" he continued urgently. "M.
+de Vlaye has bidden the men who have taken him--on the farther side of
+the river--to convey him along that bank to the ford, and so by the
+road to Vlaye. And--will you trust me now, mademoiselle?"
+
+"I will, I will!" she sobbed. She showed him for one moment her
+tear-stained, impassioned face. "If you will help me! If you will help
+my brother!"
+
+"I will!" he said, and then, and abruptly, he laid his hand on her and
+violently pressed her down. "Be still!" he muttered in a tone of sharp
+warning. "I have no more wish to be seen by Vlaye than your brother
+had!" Lying beside her, he peeped warily over the hay by which he was
+partly hidden; a slight hollow in which that particular cock rested
+served to shelter them somewhat, but the screen was slight. "I fear
+they are coming this way," he continued, his voice not quite steady.
+"I would I had my horse here, and sound, and I would trouble them
+little. But all is not lost, all is not lost," he repeated slowly,
+"till their hands are on us! Nor, may-be, even then!"
+
+She understood, and lay trembling and hiding her face, unable to face
+this new terror. The thunder of hoofs, coming nearer and nearer, once
+more shook the earth. The horsemen were returning from the river.
+
+"Lie low!" he repeated, more coolly. "They have spied the Countess. I
+feared they would. And they are hot foot after her--so ho! And we are
+saved! Yes," he continued, peeping again and more boldly, "we are
+saved, I think. They have stopped her, just as Roger and her
+man--clever Roger, he will make a general yet--were about to pass her
+over the bridge. Another minute and they had got her to cover in the
+house, and it had been my fate to be taken."
+
+She did not answer, her agitation was too great. And after a brief
+silence during which the Lieutenant watched what went forward at the
+end of the meadow: "Now, mademoiselle," he said in a more gentle tone,
+"it is for the Countess I want your help. I will answer for your
+brother. If no accident befall him he shall be free before many hours
+are over his head. Remember that! But with Mademoiselle de
+Rochechouart--if she be once removed to Vlaye, and cast into this
+man's power, it will go hard. She is a child, little able to resist.
+Do you go to her, support her, speak for her, fight for her even--only
+gain time. Gain time! He will not resort to violence at once, or I am
+mistaken. He will not drag her away by force until he has exhausted
+all other means. He will suffer her to stay awhile if you play your
+part well. And you must play it well!"
+
+"I will!" Bonne cried, all her forces rallied by hope. "I do not know
+who you are, but save my brother----"
+
+"I will save him!"
+
+"And I will bless you!"
+
+"Do you save the Countess, and she will bless you!" he answered
+cheerfully. "Now to her, mademoiselle, and do not leave her. Go! Show
+yourself as brave there as here, and----"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, but as she rose his hand, through some
+accident, or some impulse that surprised him--for such weaknesses were
+not in his nature--met hers through the hay and clasped it. The girl
+reddened to the brow, sprang up, and in a trice was hastening across
+the field towards the crowd that in a confused medley of horse and
+foot, peasants and troopers, was gathered about the stone bridge which
+spanned the brook. The sun beat hotly down on the little mob, but in
+the interest of the scene which was passing in their midst no one
+thought twice of the heat.
+
+Bonne's spirits were in a tumult. She hardly knew what she thought or
+how she felt, or what she was going to do.
+
+But one thing she knew. On one thing she set her foot with every step,
+and that was fear. A new courage, and a new feeling, filled the girl
+with an excitement half-painful, half-delightful. Whence this was she
+did not ask herself, nor why she rested so confidently on the
+guarantee of her brother's safety, which an untried stranger had given
+her. It was enough that he had given it. She did not go beyond that.
+
+When she came, hot and panting, to the skirts of the crowd, she found
+that she must push her way between the horses of the troopers if she
+would see anything of what was passing. In the act she noticed that
+half the men were grinning, the others exchanging sly looks and winks.
+But she was through at last. Now she could see what was afoot.
+
+On the bridge, three paces before her, stood M. de Vlaye with his back
+to her. He had dismounted, and had his hat in his hand. Beyond him,
+standing at bay, as it seemed, against the low side wall of the
+bridge, was the Countess, her small face white, and puckered, and
+sullen, and behind her again stood Roger, and Fulbert, the steward,
+with a wild-beast glare in his eyes.
+
+"Surely, mademoiselle," Bonne heard M. de Vlaye say in honeyed
+accents, as she emerged from the crowd, "surely it were better you
+mounted here----"
+
+"No!"
+
+"And rode to the château. And then at your leisure----"
+
+"No, I thank you. I will walk."
+
+"But, Countess, you are not safe," he persisted, "on foot and in the
+open, after what has passed."
+
+"Then I will go to the château," she replied, "but I can walk, I thank
+you." It was strange to see the firmness, ay, and dignity, that awoke
+in her in this extremity.
+
+"That, of course," M, de Vlaye replied lightly. "Of course. But seeing
+the Abbess on horseback, I thought that you might prefer to ride with
+her----"
+
+"It is but a step."
+
+"And I am walking," Bonne struck in, pushing to the front. "I will go
+with the Countess to the house." She spoke with a firmness which
+surprised herself, and certainly surprised M. de Vlaye, who had not
+seen her at his elbow. He hesitated, and partly in view of the
+Countess's attitude, partly of the fact that he had not precisely
+defined his next step if he got her mounted--he gave way.
+
+"By all means," he said. "And we will form your guard."
+
+Bonne passed her arm round the young Countess. "Come," she said. "I
+see my sister has preceded us to the house. The sun is hot, and the
+sooner we are under cover the better."
+
+It was not the heat of the sun, however, that had driven the Abbess
+from the scene, but a spirit of temper. She had no suspicion of the
+truth--as yet. But the fuss which M. de Vlaye seemed bent on making
+about the little countess piqued her, and after looking on a minute or
+two, and finding herself still left in the background, she had let her
+jealousy have vent, had struck spur to her horse and ridden back to
+the house in a rage. This was the last thing she would have done had
+her eyes been open. Had she guessed how welcome to her admirer her
+retreat at that moment was, she would have risked a hundred sunstrokes
+before she went!
+
+She had no notion of the real situation, however, and Bonne, who had,
+and with a woman's wit saw in her a potent ally, was too late to call
+her back, though she longed to do it. Between the bridge and the
+house-gate lay three hundred yards, every yard, it seemed to Bonne, a
+yard of peril to her charge; and the girl nerved herself accordingly.
+For Vlaye's darkening face sufficiently declared his perplexity. At
+any instant, at any point, he might throw off the mask of courtesy,
+use force, and ride off with his prey. And what could she do?
+
+Only with a brave face walk slowly, slowly, talking as she went!
+Talking and making believe to be at ease; repressing both the
+treacherous flutter of her own heart and the little Countess's
+tendency to start at every movement M. de Vlaye made--as the lamb
+starts when the wolf bares its teeth! Bonne felt that to let him see
+that they expected violence was to invite it; and though, if he made a
+movement to seize her companion, she was prepared to cling and scream
+and fight with her very nails--she knew that such methods were the
+last desperate resource, to resort to which portended defeat.
+
+He walked abreast of them, his rein on his arm, his haughty head bent.
+A little behind them on the left side walked Roger and the Countess's
+steward. Behind these again, at a short distance, followed the mob of
+troopers, grinning and nudging one another, and scarce deigning to
+hide their amusement.
+
+Bonne guessed all, yet she talked bravely. "It is quite an adventure!"
+she said brightly. "We did but half believe it, M. de Vlaye! Until you
+told us, we thought mademoiselle must be romancing. That she could not
+be--oh, no, it seemed impossible that she could be the real Countess!"
+
+"Indeed?" M. de Vlaye answered, measuring with his keen eye the
+distance to the corner of the courtyard. The girl's chatter
+embarrassed him. He could not weigh quite coolly the chances and the
+risks.
+
+"It was after nine o'clock--yes, it must have been nearer midnight!"
+Bonne continued, with that woman's power of dissembling which puts
+men's acting to shame. "It was quite an alarm when she came! We
+thought we were to be robbed."
+
+"It is for that reason," Vlaye said smoothly, "I wish the Countess to
+be placed in safety."
+
+"Or that it was the Crocans----"
+
+"Precisely--it might have been. And therefore I wish her to place
+herself without delay----"
+
+"In proper clothes!" Bonne exclaimed cheerfully. "Of course! So she
+must, M. de Vlaye, and this minute! To think of the Countess of
+Rochechouart"--she laughed, and affectionately drew the girl nearer to
+her--"making hay in a waiting-woman's clothes! No wonder that she did
+not wish to be seen!"
+
+M. de Vlaye looked at the chatterer askance, and mechanically gnawed
+his moustache. He believed, nay, he was almost sure that she knew all
+and was playing with him. If so she was playing so successfully that
+here they were at the corner of the courtyard and he no nearer a
+decision. They had but to pass along one wall, turn, and in forty
+paces they would be at the gate. He must make up his mind promptly,
+then! And, curse her! she talked so fast that he could not bring his
+mind to it, or weigh the emergencies. If he seized the girl here----
+
+"Roger should not have let her try to cross the brook, M. de Vlaye,
+should he?" Bonne babbled. "He should have known better. Now she has
+wet her feet and must change her shoes! Yes," playfully, "you must,
+mademoiselle."
+
+"I will," the Countess muttered with shaking lips.
+
+One of the troopers who had been of the expedition the day before, and
+whom the situation tickled, laughed on a sudden outright. M. de Vlaye
+half halted, turned and looked back in wrath. Was he going to give the
+signal? Bonne's arm shook. But no, he turned again. And they were
+almost at the second corner; now they turned it, and her eyes sought
+the gate greedily, to learn who awaited them there. If the Vicomte was
+there, and her sister, it was so much in her favour. He would hardly
+dare to carry the girl off by force under their eyes.
+
+But they were not there. Even Solomon was invisible; probably he had
+taken the Abbess's horse to the stable. Bonne was left to her own
+resources, therefore, to her own wits; and at the gate, at the moment
+of interest, at the last moment, the pinch would come.
+
+And still, but with a dry throat, she talked. "To leave the sun for
+the shade!" she cried with a prodigious sigh as the western wall of
+the courtyard intervened and protected them from the sun's heat. "Is
+it not delightful! It was almost worth while to be so hot, to feel so
+cool! Are you cool, M. de Vlaye?"
+
+"Yes," he replied grimly, "but----"
+
+
+                   "Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?"
+
+
+she sang, cutting him short--they were within seven or eight paces of
+the gateway, and she fancied that his face was growing hard, that she
+detected the movements of a man preparing to make his leap--
+
+
+                       "Sommes-nous à la rive?
+                    Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?
+                        Sommes-nous à la rive?
+
+
+_A la rive? A la rive!_" she chanted, her arm closing more tightly
+about the Countess. "_A la rive!_"
+
+With the last word--_Pouf!_--she thrust the child towards the open
+gateway, and by the same movement dropped on her knees in front of M.
+de Vlaye, completely thwarting his first instinctive impulse, which
+was to snatch at the Countess. "It is my pin!" she cried, rising as
+quickly as she had knelt--the whole seemed but one movement. "Pardon,
+M. de Vlaye," she continued, but by that time the Countess was twenty
+paces away, and half-way across the court. "Did I interrupt you? How
+lucky to find it! I must have lost it yesterday!"
+
+He did not speak, but his eyes betrayed his rage--rage not the less
+that his men had witnessed and understood the man[oe]uvre; nay, dared
+by a titter to betray their amusement. For an instant he was tempted
+to seize her and crush the cursed pride out of her--he to be outwitted
+before his people by a woman! Or why should he not take her a hostage
+in the other's room?
+
+Then he remembered that he needed no hostage; he had one already. In a
+voice that drove the blood from her cheeks, "Take care! Take care,
+mademoiselle!" he muttered. "Sometimes one pays too much for such a
+trifle as a pin. You might have hurt yourself, stooping so suddenly!
+Or hurt--your brother!"
+
+Roger could no longer keep silence. "I can take care of myself, M. de
+Vlaye," he said, "and of my sister also, I would have you know."
+
+But M. de Vlaye had himself in hand again. "It was not to you I
+referred," he said coldly and contemptuously. "Take me to your
+father."
+
+They found the Vicomte awaiting them on the drawbridge at the farther
+side of the court. But the Countess had vanished; she had not lost a
+moment in hiding herself in the recesses of her room. For the first
+time in their intercourse M. de Vlaye approached his host without
+ceremony or greeting.
+
+"The Countess must come with me," he said roughly and roundly. "She
+cannot stay here. This place," with a look of naked scorn, "is no
+place for her. Give orders, if you please, that she prepare to
+accompany me."
+
+The Vicomte, shaken by the events of the morning, stood thunderstruck.
+His hand trembled on his staff, and for a moment he could not speak.
+At last--
+
+"The Countess is in my care, and under my protection," he said, in a
+voice shrill with emotion.
+
+"Neither of which would avail her in the least," M. de Vlaye answered
+brutally, "in the event of danger! But it is not to enter into an
+argument that I am here. I care nothing for the number of your
+household, or the strength of your house, M. le Vicomte, or," with a
+sneer, "what was the condition of either--before Coutras. The point
+is, this is no place for one in the Countess of Rochechouart's
+position. It is my duty to see her placed in a position of greater
+safety, and I intend to perform that duty!"
+
+The Vicomte, powerless as he was, shook with passion. "Since when," he
+exclaimed, "has that duty been laid upon you?"
+
+"It is laid on me," the Captain of Vlaye answered contemptuously, "by
+the fact that there is no one else in the district who can perform
+it."
+
+"You will perform it at your peril," the Vicomte said.
+
+"I shall perform it."
+
+"But if the Countess prefers to stay here?" Roger cried, interfering
+hotly.
+
+"It is a question of her safety, and not of her preference," Vlaye
+retorted, standing grim and cold before them. "She must come."
+
+A dozen of his troopers had ridden into the courtyard, and from their
+saddles were watching the group on the drawbridge. The group
+consisted, besides the Vicomte, of Roger and his sister, old Solomon
+the porter, and the wild-looking steward. Roger, his heart bursting
+with indignation, measured with his eye the distance across the
+courtyard, and had thoughts of flinging himself upon Vlaye, bearing
+him to the ground, and making his life the price of his men's
+withdrawal. But he had no weapon, Solomon and Fulbert were in the like
+case, and the Captain of Vlaye, a man in the prime of life, and armed,
+was likely to prove a match for all three.
+
+If the Vicomte's ancestors in the pride of their day and power had
+been deaf to the poor man's cry, if the justice-elm without the castle
+gates had received in the centuries past the last sighs of the
+innocent, if the towers of the old house had been built in groaning
+and cemented with blood, some part of the debt was paid this day on
+the drawbridge. To see the sacred rights of hospitality deforced, to
+stand by while the guest whom he could not protect--and that guest a
+woman of his rank and kind--was torn from his hearth, to be set for a
+laughing-stock to this canaille of troopers--such a humiliation should
+have slain the last of the Villeneuves where he stood.
+
+Yet the Vicomte lived--lived, it is true, with twitching lips and
+shaking hands--but lived, and, after a few seconds of moody silence,
+stooped to parry the blow which he could not return.
+
+"To-morrow--if you will wait until to-morrow," he muttered, "she may
+be better prepared to--take the journey."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, if you will give us till to-morrow"--reluctantly--"we may
+persuade her."
+
+M. de Vlaye's answer was as unexpected as it was decisive. "Be it so!"
+he said. "She shall have till to-morrow." He spoke more graciously,
+more courteously, than he had yet spoken. "I have been--it is possible
+that in my anxiety for her safety, M. le Vicomte, I have been hasty.
+Once a soldier, always a soldier! Forgive me, and you, mademoiselle,
+the same; and I, on my side, will say to-morrow. There, I am not
+unreasonable," with a poor attempt at joviality. "Only I must leave
+with you ten or a dozen troopers for her safe keeping. And beyond
+to-morrow, in the present state of the country, I cannot spare them."
+
+At the mention of the troopers the Vicomte's jaw fell. He stared.
+
+"Will not that suit you?" M. de Vlaye said gaily. He had recovered his
+usual spirits. He spoke in his old tone.
+
+"It must," the Vicomte answered sullenly. "But I could answer for her
+without your troopers."
+
+M. de Vlaye shook his head. "Ah, no," he said. "I can say no better
+than that. With the Crocans so near, and growing in boldness every
+day, I am bound to be careful. I am told," with a peculiar smile,
+"that some ne'er-do-wells of birth have joined them in these parts.
+The worse for them!"
+
+"Well, be it so," the Vicomte said with a ghastly smile. "Be it so! Be
+it so!"
+
+"Good," Vlaye answered cheerfully--he grew more at his ease with every
+word. Some might have thought that he had gained all he wanted or saw
+a new and easy way to it. "Good, and as I must be returning, I will
+give the necessary orders at once."
+
+He turned as he spoke, and crossing the courtyard, conferred awhile
+with Ampoule, his second in command. Hurriedly men were told off to
+this hand and that, some trotting briskly under the archway--where the
+hay of more peaceful days deadened the sound of hoofs, and the cobwebs
+almost swept their heads--and others entering by the same road.
+Presently M. de Vlaye, whose horse had been brought to him, got to his
+saddle, rode a few paces nearer the drawbridge, and raised his hat.
+
+"I have done as you wish," he said. "Until tomorrow, M. le Vicomte!
+Mademoiselle, I kiss your hands!" And wilfully blind to the coldness
+of the salutation made in return, he wheeled his horse gracefully,
+called a man to his side, and rode out of the court.
+
+The Vicomte let his chin fall upon his breast, and beyond a doubt his
+reflections were of the bitterest. But soon he remembered that there
+were strange eyes upon him, and he turned and went heavily into his
+house, the house that others now had in keeping. Old Solomon followed
+him with an anxious face, and Fulbert, ever desirous to be with his
+mistress, vanished in their train. The troopers, after one or two
+glances at the two who remained on the drawbridge, and a jest at which
+some laughed outright and some made covert gestures of derision, began
+to lead their horses into the long stable.
+
+Roger's eye met Bonne's in a glance of flame. "Do you see?" he said.
+"He was to leave twelve--at the most. He has left eighteen. Do you
+understand?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I do!" he said. "I do! We may go to our prayers!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                         A SOLDIERS' FROLIC.
+
+
+A few hours later the château of Villeneuve, buried in the lonely
+woods, wore a strange and unusual aspect.
+
+To all things there comes an end, even to long silences and the march
+of uneventful years. Summer evening after summer evening had looked
+its last through darkening tree-tops on the house of Villeneuve, and
+marked but a spare taper burning here and there in its recesses.
+Winter evening after winter evening had fallen on the dripping woods
+and listened in vain for the sounds of revelry that had once beaconed
+the lost wayfarer, and held wolves doubting on the extremest edge of
+pasture. Night after night for well-nigh a generation--with the one
+exception of the historic night of Coutras, when the pursuers feasted
+in its hall--the house had stood shadowy and silent in the dim spaces
+of its clearing, and prowling beasts had haunted without fear its
+threshold. A rotten branch, falling in the depth of the forest, now
+scared more than its loudest orgy; nay, the dead lords, at rest in the
+decaying graveyard where the Abbey had stood, made as much impression
+on the night--for often the will o' the wisp burned there--as their
+fallen descendants in his darkling house.
+
+Until this night, when the wild things of the wood saw with wonder the
+glow in the tree-tops and cowered in their lairs, and the owl mousing
+in the uplands beyond the river shrank from the light in the meadows,
+and flew to shelter. Beside the well in the courtyard blazed such a
+bonfire as frightened the sparrows from the ivy; and the wolf had been
+brave indeed that ventured within half a mile of the singers, whose
+voices woke the echoes of the ancient towers.
+
+
+             "Les femmes ne portent pas moustache,
+                    Mordieu, Marion!
+              Les femmes ne portent pas moustache!
+
+              C'était des mûres qu'ell' mangeait
+                    Mon dieu, mon ami!
+              C'était des mûres qu'ell' mangeait!"
+
+
+As the troopers, seated, some on the well-curb, and some on logs and
+buckets, beat out the chorus, or broke off to quarrel across the
+flames, a chance passer might have thought the night of the great
+battle come again. Old Solomon, listening to the roar of the wood, and
+watching the train of sparks fly upwards, trembled for his haystacks;
+nor would the man of peace have been a coward who, looking in at the
+open gate, preferred a bed in the greenwood to the peril of entrance.
+The more timid of the serving-men had hidden themselves with sunset;
+the dogs had fled to kennel with drooping tails. The noise was such
+that but for one thing a stranger must have supposed that a mutiny was
+on the point of breaking out. This was the cool demeanour of Ampoule,
+M. de Vlaye's lieutenant; who with a couple of confidants sat drinking
+in the outer hall, where the flames of an unwonted fire shone on torn
+pennons and dusty head-pieces. When asked by Roger to reduce the men
+to order, as the women could not sleep, he had shown himself offhand
+to the point of insolence, curt to the point of brutality. "Have a
+care of yourselves, and I'll have a care of my men!" he said. "You go
+to your own!" And he would hear no more.
+
+The Vicomte for a while noticed none of these things. The events of
+the morning had aged and shaken him, and for hours he sat speechless,
+with dull eyes, thinking of God knows what--perhaps of the son he had
+cast off, or of his own fallen estate, or of the peril of his guest.
+In vain did Roger and his younger daughter try to rouse him from his
+reverie--try to gain some counsel, some comfort from him. They could
+not. But that which their timid efforts failed to effect, the rising
+tempest of joviality at last and suddenly wrought.
+
+"Where is Solomon?" he cried, lifting his head as one awakened from
+sleep. And he looked about him in great wrath. "Where is Solomon? Why
+does he not put a stop to this babel? 'Sdeath, man, am I to put up
+with this? Do you hear me?" looking round. "Do you want them to bring
+the Abbess downstairs?"
+
+Bonne and Roger, who were crouching with the little Countess in one of
+the two window-recesses that overlooked the courtyard, rose to go to
+him. But Solomon, who had been hiding in the shadows about the door,
+was before them. "To be sure, my lord, to be sure!" the old servant
+said gallantly, though his troubled face and twitching beard bespoke
+his knowledge of the real position. "To be sure, my lord, it is not
+the first time by a many hundred the knaves have forgot themselves,
+and I've had to go with a stirrup-leather and bring them to their
+senses! The liquor that has run in this house"--he lifted his hands in
+admiration--"'tis no wonder, my lord, it goes sometimes to the head!"
+
+"Go out, man! Go out and put a stop to it!" the Vicomte retorted
+passionately. "Your chattering does but add to it!"
+
+"To be sure, my lord, I am going," Solomon answered bravely. But his
+eyes asked Roger a question. "To be sure it is like old days, my lord,
+and I thought that may-be you would like them to have their way a
+while."
+
+"I should like it, fool?"
+
+"You might think it better----"
+
+"Begone!"
+
+"Nay," Roger said, approaching the Vicomte. "Nay, if any one goes,
+sir, I must. Solomon is old, and they may mishandle him."
+
+"Mishandle him?" the Vicomte said, opening his eyes in astonishment.
+"Mishandle my steward? My----" He broke off, his hands feeling
+tremulously for the arms of his chair; he found them and sank back in
+it. "I--I had forgotten!" he muttered, his head sinking on his breast.
+"I had forgotten. I dreamt, and now I am awake. I dreamt," he
+continued, speaking with increasing bitterness, "that I was Seigneur
+and Vicomte of Villeneuve, and Baron of Vlaye! With swords at my will,
+and steeds in stall, and a lusty son to take him by the beard who
+crossed me! And I am a beggar! A beggar, with no son to call a son,
+with no sword but that old fool's blade! Mishandle him?" gloomily.
+"Ay, they may mishandle him!" he continued feebly, his head sinking
+yet lower on his breast. "But there. It is over. Let them do what they
+will!"
+
+He continued to mutter, but incoherently, and Roger, signing to
+Solomon to go to his place again, slunk back to the window recess. The
+lad had no hope of effecting more with Ampoule, a brutal man where
+rein was given him; and he crouched once more where he could see the
+dark figures carousing in the glare that reached to the range of
+stables. In order that those in the room might see without being seen,
+Solomon had lighted no more than two candles, and these were not
+behind the window, where Roger and the two girls sat in the shadow.
+They could therefore look out unchecked.
+
+The day had been--and not many hours past--when the lad's cheek would
+have burned under the sneer just flung at him. Now, though a stranger
+and a girl had heard it, he was unmoved. For petty feelings of that
+kind his mind had no longer space. The conduct of the man whom
+Vlaye had left on guard, the increasing disorder and babel of the
+half-drunken troopers, awoke in him neither indignation nor anger, nor
+astonishment, but only fear. Not a fear that unmanned him, though he
+faced his first real peril, nor a fear that disarmed him, but one that
+braced him to do his best, that enabled him to think, and plan, and
+determine--crook-shouldered as he was--with a coolness which some day,
+as des Ageaux had said, might make of him a commander of men.
+
+He was convinced that the men's unruliness was a thing planned and
+arranged. The Captain of Vlaye had conceived the wickedness of doing
+by others what he dared not do himself. The men, unless Roger was
+mistaken, would pass still more out of hand; the officer would profess
+himself impotent. Then, it might not be this evening, but to-morrow,
+or to-morrow evening at latest, the men would burst all bounds, cast
+aside respect, seize the young Countess, and bear her off. At the
+ford, or where you will, Vlaye would encounter them, rescue her, and
+while he gained a hold on her gratitude, would effect that which he
+had shrunk from doing openly.
+
+It was a wicked, nay, a devilish plan, because in the course of its
+execution there must come a moment when all in the house--and not the
+young girl only at whom the plan was aimed--would lie at the men's
+mercy. For a time the men, half-drunk, must be masters. A moment there
+must be of extreme danger, threatening all, embracing all; and he, a
+lad, stood alone to meet it. Alone, save for one old man; for the
+Vicomte was past such work, and the servants had fled. And though
+Bonne, to whom as well as to the young Countess he had disclosed his
+fears, persisted in the hope of rescue, and based that hope on their
+strange guest's promise, he had little or no hope.
+
+As he crouched with the two girls in the dark window recess, he faced
+the danger coolly, though the scene was one to depress an older heart.
+The scanty rays of the two candles which lighted a small part of the
+chamber fell full on the Vicomte, where he sat sunk low in his chair,
+a shiver passing now and again over his inert and feeble limbs. The
+only figure visible against the gloomy, dust-coloured hangings, he
+seemed the type of a race fallen hopelessly; his features, once
+imperious, hung flaccid, his hands clung weakly to the arms of his
+chair. He was capable still of one brief, foolish outburst, one
+passionate stroke; but no help or wise counsel could be expected from
+him. He was astonishingly aged in one day; even his power to wound the
+mind seemed near its end.
+
+In contrast with that drooping figure, seated amid the shadows of the
+room in which generations of Villeneuves had lorded it royally, the
+scene without struck with an appalling sense of virility. The lusty
+troopers lolling in the hot blaze of the bonfire, on which one or
+another constantly flung fresh wood, and now roaring out some
+gutter-stave, now flinging coarse badinage hither and thither, were
+such as years of license and cruel campaigning had made them; men such
+as it took a Vlaye or a Montluc to curb. And had the lad who watched
+them with burning eyes and a beating heart lacked one jot of the
+perfect courage, he had as soon thought of pitting himself against
+them as of raising dead bones to life.
+
+But he had that thought, and even planned and plotted as he watched
+them. "Where is Odette?" he asked in a whisper. He had Bonne's hand in
+his, her other arm held the Countess to her. "They may be afraid of
+her. If she spoke to the officer, he might listen to her."
+
+"She will not believe there is danger," Bonne answered with something
+like a sob. "She will not hear a word. I began to explain about the
+Countess and she flew into a passion. She has shut herself up and says
+that we are all mad, stark mad from living alone, and afraid of our
+shadows. And she and her women have shut themselves up in her chamber.
+I have been to the door twice, but she will hear nothing."
+
+"She will hear too much by and by!" Roger muttered.
+
+Then a thing happened. The light cast by the bonfire embraced, it has
+been said, the whole of the courtyard. The men, confident in their
+strength, had left the gate open. As Roger ceased to speak, a single
+horseman emerged, silent as a spectre, from the low gateway, and
+advancing at a foot-pace three or four steps, drew rein, and gazed in
+astonishment at the scene of hilarity presented to him.
+
+The three at the window were the first to see him. Roger's hand closed
+on his sister's; hers, so cold a moment before, grew on a sudden hot.
+"Who is it?" Roger muttered. "Who is it?" The court, which sloped a
+little from the house, was wide, but it might have been narrow and
+still he had asked, for the stranger wore--it was no uncommon fashion
+in those days--a mask. It was a slender thing, hiding only the upper
+part of the face, but it sufficed. "Who is it?" Roger repeated.
+
+"M. des Voeux!" Bonne answered involuntarily. In their excitement the
+three rose to their feet.
+
+Whether it were M. des Voeux or not, the masked man seemed in two
+minds about advancing. He had even turned his horse as if he would go
+out again, when some of the revellers espied him, and on the instant a
+silence, broken only by the crackling of the logs, and as striking as
+the previous din, proclaimed the fact.
+
+The change seemed to encourage the stranger to advance. As he wheeled
+again and paced nearer, the men who sat on the farther side of the
+fire from him, and for that reason could not see him, rose and stood
+gaping at him through the smoke. He moved nearer to the outer ring.
+
+"Who lives here, my good people?" he asked in a voice peculiarly sweet
+and clear; his tone smacked even a little womanish.
+
+One of the men stifled a drunken laugh. Another turned, and after
+winking at his neighbours--who passed the joke round--advanced a pace
+or two, uncovered elaborately and bowed with ceremony to match. "M. le
+Vicomte de Villeneuve, if it please you, my lord--I should say your
+excellency!" with another low bow.
+
+"Curse on it!" the stranger exclaimed.
+
+The men's spokesman stared an instant, taken aback by the unexpected
+rejoinder. Then, aware that his reputation among his fellows was
+at stake, he recovered himself. "Did your excellency, my lord
+duke"--another delighted chuckle among the men--"please to speak?"
+
+"Go and tell him I am here," the masked man answered, disregarding
+their horse-play; and he released his feet from the stirrups. The
+window of the dining-hall was open, and the three at it could mark him
+well, and hear every word of the dialogue.
+
+"If your excellency--would enter?" the man rejoined with the same
+travesty of politeness. "The Vicomte would not wish you, I am sure, to
+await his coming."
+
+"Very good. And do you, fellow, tell him that I crave the favour of a
+night's lodging. That I am alone, and my--but the rest I will tell him
+myself!"
+
+The troopers nudged one another. "Go, Jasper," said the spokesman
+aloud, "and carry his excellency's commands to M. le Vicomte. Your
+horse, my lord duke, shall be taken care of! This way, if it please
+you my lord duke! And do some of you," turning, and making, unseen by
+the stranger, the motion of turning a key--"bring lights! Lights to
+the west tower, do you hear?"
+
+The faces of the three within the window were pressed against the
+panes. "Who can he be?" Bonne muttered. "They call him----"
+
+"They are fooling him!" Roger replied In wrath. "They know no more who
+he is than we do! He is not des Voeux. He has not his height, and not
+half his width. But what," angrily, "are they doing now? Where are
+they taking the man? Why are they taking him to the old tower?"
+
+Why indeed?
+
+Instead of conducting the guest over the bridge which led to the
+inhabited part of the house, the trooper, attended by four or five of
+his half-drunken comrades, was ushering him with ceremony to the
+lesser bridge which led to the western tower; the ground floor of
+which, a cold damp dungeon-like place, was used as a wood store. It
+had been opened a few hours before, that fagots might be taken from
+it, and this circumstance had perhaps suggested the joke to the prime
+conspirator.
+
+"Lights are coming, my lord duke!" he said, taking a flaring brand
+from one of his comrades and holding it aloft. He was chuckling
+inwardly at the folly of the stranger in swallowing his egregious
+titles without demur. "The Vicomte shall be told. Beware of the step,
+my lord!" lowering his light that the other might see it. They were on
+the threshold now, and he pushed open the door that already stood
+ajar. "The step is somewhat awkward, your excellency! We have to go
+through the--it is somewhat old-fashioned, but craving your
+excellency's pardon for bringing you this way--Yah!"
+
+With the word a sudden push thrust the unsuspecting stranger forward.
+Involuntarily he stumbled, tripped and with a cry of rage found
+himself on his hands and knees among the fagots. Before he could rise
+the door clanged horridly on him, the key grated in the lock, he was
+in darkness, a prisoner!
+
+The men, reckless and half-drunk, roared with delight at the jest.
+"Welcome, my lord duke!" the ringleader cried, holding aloft his
+light, and bowing to the ground before the thick oaken door. "Welcome
+to Villeneuve!"
+
+"Welcome!" cried the others, waving their lights, and clutching one
+another in fits of laughter. "Welcome to Villeneuve! A good night to
+you! An appetite to your supper, my lord duke!"
+
+So they gibed awhile. Then, beginning to weary of it, they turned and,
+still shaking with laughter, discovered an addition to their party:
+Roger stood before them, his eyes glittering with excitement. The lad
+had not been able to look on and see the trick played on a guest; the
+more as that guest represented his one solitary, feeble hope of help.
+The men might still be sober enough to listen; at any rate he would
+try. Much against their wills he had broken away from the girls. He
+was here.
+
+"Open that door!" he said.
+
+The man to whom he spoke, the ringleader, looked almost as much
+astonished as he was. The others ceased to laugh, and waited to see
+what would happen.
+
+"That door?" the man concerned answered slowly as soon as he could
+bring his thoughts to bear on the emergency.
+
+"Yes, that door!" Roger cried imperiously, all the Villeneuve in him
+rising to the surface. "And instantly, fellow!"
+
+"So be it, if you will have it so," the man replied, shrugging his
+shoulders. "But it was only a jest, and----"
+
+"There is enough of the jest, and too much!" Roger retorted. He spoke
+so bravely that not a man remembered his crooked shoulders. "Open, I
+say!"
+
+The man shook his head. "Best not," he said.
+
+"It shall be done!"
+
+"Well, you can open, if you please," the man replied. "But I am M. de
+Vlaye's man and take orders nowhere else!" And with an insolent
+gesture he flung the key on the ground.
+
+To punish him for his insolence, when they were a score to one, was
+impossible. Roger took up the key, set it in the lock, turned, opened,
+and, tricked in his turn, plunged head first into the darkness,
+impelled by a treacherous thrust from behind. Crash! The door was shut
+on him.
+
+But he knew naught of that. As he fell forward a savage blow from the
+front, from the darkness, hurled him breathless against a pile of
+fagots. At the same moment a voice cried in his ear, "There is one is
+spent, Deo Laus!" A hand groped for him, a foot was set hard against
+him, and something wrenched at his clothes.
+
+"Why," quoth the same voice a second later--the darkness was almost
+perfect--"did I not run the rascal through?"
+
+"No!" Roger said, and as the stranger's sword, which had only passed
+through his clothes, was dragged clear, he nimbly shifted his place.
+"And I beg you will not," he continued hurriedly. "I was coming to
+your aid, and those treacherous dogs played the same trick on me!"
+"Then who are you?"
+
+"I am Roger de Villeneuve, my father's son."
+
+"Then it _is_ Villeneuve, this place? They did not lie in that?"
+
+"No, it is Villeneuve, but these scoundrels are Vlaye's people," Roger
+answered. He was in the depths of despair, for the girls were alone
+now and unprotected. "They are in possession here," he continued,
+almost weeping. "M. de Vlaye----"
+
+"The Captain of Vlaye, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes. He tried to seize the Countess of Rochechouart as she passed
+this way yesterday. She took refuge here and he did not dare to drag
+her away. So he left these men to guard her, as he said; but really to
+carry her off as soon as they should be drunk enough to venture on
+it." Poor Roger's voice shook. He was lamenting his folly, his
+dreadful folly, in leaving the women.
+
+The stranger took the news, as was natural, after a different fashion,
+and one strange enough. First he swore with a deliberate fluency that
+shocked the country lad; and then he laughed with a light-hearted
+joyousness that was still more alien from the circumstances. "Well, it
+is an adventure!" he cried. "It is an adventure! And for what did I
+come? To the fool his folly! And one fool makes many! But do you
+think, my friend," he continued, speaking in a different strain, "that
+they will carry off the Countess while we lie here?"
+
+Roger, raging in the dark, had no other thought. "Why not?" he cried.
+"Why not? And there are other women in the house." He groaned.
+
+"Young?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"And one of them--lovely?" There was amusement in the stranger's tone.
+
+"One of them is my sister," Roger retorted fiercely. And for an
+instant the other was silent.
+
+Then, "With what attendance?" he asked. "Whom have they with them that
+you can trust?"
+
+"The Countess's steward and one old man. And my father, but he is old
+also."
+
+"Pheugh!" the stranger whistled. "An adventure indeed!" From the sound
+of the fagots it seemed that he was moving. "We must out of this," he
+said, "and to the rescue! But how? There is no other door than the one
+by which we entered?"
+
+"There is one, but the key is lost, and it has not been opened for
+years."
+
+"Then we must go out as we came in," the stranger answered gaily. "But
+how? But how? Let me think! Let me think, lad!"
+
+The smell of damp earth mingled with rotting wood pervaded the
+darkness in which they stood. They could not see one another, but at a
+certain height from the ground a shaft of reddish light pierced the
+gloom and disclosed about a foot of the cobweb vault above them. This
+light entered through an arrow-slit which looked toward the bonfire,
+and apparently it suggested a plan, for presently the stranger could
+be heard stumbling and groping towards it.
+
+"You cannot go out that way!" Roger said.
+
+"No, but I can get them in!" the other answered drily, and from
+certain noises which came to his ear Roger judged that the man was
+piling wood under the opening that he might climb to it. He succeeded
+by-and-by; his head and shoulders became darkly visible at the
+window--if window that could be called which was but a span wide.
+
+"There is some one in command?" he asked. "Who is it? His name, my
+friend?" And when Roger, who fortunately remembered Ampoule's name,
+had told him: "Do you pile," he said, "some wood behind the door, so
+that it cannot be opened to the full or too quickly. It is only to
+give us time to transact the punctilios."
+
+Roger complied. He hoped--but with doubt--that the man was not mad. He
+supposed that out in the world men were of these odd and surprising
+kinds. The Lieutenant had impressed him. This strange man, who after
+coming within an ace of killing him jested, who laughed and blasphemed
+in a breath, and who was no sooner down than he was up, impressed him
+more vividly, though differently. And was to impress him still
+more. For when he had set the wood behind the door, the unknown,
+raised on his pile of fagots, thrust his face into the opening of the
+arrow-slit, and in a shrill voice of surprising timbre began to pour
+on the ill-starred Ampoule a stream of the grossest and most injurious
+abuse. Amid stinging gibes and scalding epithets, and words that
+blistered, the name rang out at intervals only to sink again under the
+torrent of vile charges and outrageous insinuations. The lad's ears
+burned as he listened; burned still more hotly as he reflected that
+the girls might be within hearing. As for the men at the fire, twenty
+seconds saw them silent with amazement. Their very laughter died out
+under that steady stream of epithets, for any one of which a man of
+honour must have cut his fellow's throat. A moment or two passed in
+this stark surprise; still the voice, ever attaining lower depths of
+abuse, went on.
+
+At length, whether some one told him or he heard it himself, the
+lieutenant came out, and, flushed with drink, listened for a while
+incredulous. But when he caught his name, undoubtedly his name,
+"Ampoule! Ampoule!" again and again, and the tale was told him, and he
+began to comprehend that in the tower was a man who dared to say of
+him, Vlaye's right hand in many a dark adventure, of him who had cut
+many a young cock's comb--to say of him the things he heard--he stood
+an instant in the blaze of the fire and bellowed like a bull.
+
+"His own sister, fifteen years old," the pitiless voice repeated.
+"Sold her to a Spanish Jew and divided the money with his mother!"
+
+Ampoule's mouth opened wide, but this time breath failed him. He
+gasped.
+
+"And being charged with it at Fontarabie," continued the voice, "as he
+returned, showed the white feather before four men at the inn, who
+took him and dipped him in a dye vat."
+
+"Son of a dog!" Ampoule shrieked, getting his voice at last. "This is
+too much! This is----"
+
+"Why, he never bullies when he is unsupported!" his tormentor went on.
+"But a craven he has always been when put to it! If he be not, let him
+say it now, and face me in a ring!"
+
+The exasperated man ground his teeth and flung out his arms. "Face
+you!" he roared. "You! You! Face me, and I will cut out your heart!"
+
+"Fine talk! Fine talk!" came the answer. "So you have said many a time
+and run! Meet me in a ring, foot to foot and fairly, in your shirt!"
+
+"I'll meet you!" the lieutenant answered passionately. "I'll meet you,
+fool of the world. Little you know whom you have bearded. You must be
+mad; but mad or not, say your prayer, for 'twill be the last time!"
+
+There was a momentary pause. Then "Promise me a ring and fair-play!"
+cried the high, delicate voice, "and a clear way of escape if I kill
+you!"
+
+"Ay, ay! That will I! All that! And much good may it do you!"
+
+"Nay, but swear it," the stranger persisted, "by--by our Lady of
+Rocamadour!"
+
+"I swear it! I swear it!"
+
+"Then," the stranger replied with a sneer, "it is for you to open.
+I've no key!" And he leapt lightly from his pile of fagots to the
+floor.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                            FATHER ANGEL.
+
+
+As he groped his way towards the door, he came into contact with
+Roger, who was also making for it. Roger gripped him and tried to hold
+him. "Is there no other way?" the lad muttered. The situation appalled
+him. "No other way? You are no match for him!"
+
+"That we shall see!" the stranger retorted curtly.
+
+"Then I shall help you!" the lad declared.
+
+"Would you take on another of them?" the stranger answered eagerly.
+"But no, you are over young for it! You are over young by your voice."
+Then, as the key grated in the lock, "Stand at my back if you will,"
+he continued, "and if they--would play me foul, it may serve. But I
+shall give him brief occasion! You will see a pretty thing, my lad."
+
+Crash! The door was forced open, letting a flood of smoky light into
+the dark place. He who had opened the door, Ampoule himself, strode
+back, when he had done it, across the wooden bridge, and flinging a
+hoarse taunt, a "Come if you dare!" over his shoulder, swaggered to
+the farther end of the hollow space which the men had formed by
+ranging themselves in three lines; the bridge and moat forming the
+fourth. One in every three or four held up a blazing firebrand,
+plucked from the flames; the light of which, falling on the
+intervening space, rendered it as clear as in the day.
+
+The stranger, a little to Roger's surprise, but less to the surprise
+of Ampoule's comrades, did not obey the summons with much alacrity. He
+waited in the doorway, accustoming his eyes to the light, and the lad,
+whose heart overflowed with pity and apprehension--for he could not
+think his ally a match for Ampoule's skill and strength--had time to
+mark the weird mingling of glare and shadow, and to wonder if this
+lurid space encircled by unreal buildings were indeed the peaceful
+courtyard which he had known from childhood. Meanwhile Ampoule waited
+disdainfully at the other end of the lists, and as one who scarcely
+expected his adversary to appear made his blade whistle in the air.
+Or, in turn, to show how lightly he held the situation, he aimed
+playful thrusts at the legs of the man who stood nearest, and who
+skipped to escape them.
+
+"Must we fetch you out, dirty rogue?" he cried, after a minute of
+this. "Or----"
+
+"Oh, _tace_! _tace!_" the stranger answered in a peevish tone. He
+showed himself on the drawbridge, and with an air of great caution
+began to cross it. He still wore his mask. "You are more anxious than
+most to reach the end of your life," he continued in the same
+querulous tone. "You are ready?"
+
+"Ready, when you please!" Ampoule retorted fuming. "It is not I----"
+
+"Who hang back?" the stranger answered. As he spoke he stepped from
+the end of the bridge like a man stepping into cold water. He even
+seemed to hold himself ready to flee if attacked too suddenly. "But
+you are sure you are ready now?" he queried. "Quite ready? Do not let
+me"--with a backward glance--"take you by surprise!"
+
+Ampoule began to think that it would not be without trouble he would
+draw his adversary within reach. The duels of those days, be it
+remembered, were not formal. Often men fought without seconds;
+sometimes in full armour, sometimes in their shirts. Advantages that
+would now be deemed dishonourable were taken by the most punctilious.
+So, to lure on his man and show his own contempt for the affair,
+Ampoule tossed up his sword, and caught it again by the hilt. "I'm
+ready!" he said. He came forward three paces, and again tossing up his
+sword, recovered it.
+
+But the masked man seemed to be unwilling to quit the shelter of the
+drawbridge; so unwilling that Roger, who had taken up his position on
+the bridge behind him, felt his cheek grow hot. His ally had proved
+himself such a master of tongue fence as he had never imagined. Was
+he, ready as he had been to provoke the quarrel, of those who blench
+when the time comes to make good the taunt?
+
+It seemed so. For the stranger still hung undecided, a foot as it were
+either way. "You are sure that I should not now take you by surprise?"
+he babbled, venturing at length a couple of paces in the direction of
+the foe--but glancing behind between his steps.
+
+"I am quite sure," Ampoule answered scornfully, "that I see before me
+a poltroon and a coward!"
+
+The word was still on his lips, when like a tiger-cat, like that which
+in all the world is most swift to move, like, if you will, the wild
+boar that will charge an army, the mask darted rather than ran upon
+his opponent. But at the same time with an incredible lightness.
+Before Ampoule could place himself in the best posture, before he
+could bring his sword-point to the level, or deal one of those famous
+"_estramaçons_" which he had been wasting on the empty air, the other
+was within his guard, they were at close quarters, the advantage of
+the bigger man's length of arm was gone. How it went after that, who
+struck, who parried, not the most experienced eye could see. So quick
+on one another, so furious, so passionate were the half-dozen blows
+the masked man dealt, that the clearest vision failed to follow them.
+It was as if a wild cat, having itself nine lives, had launched itself
+at Ampoule's throat, and gripped, and stabbed, and struck, and in ten
+seconds borne him to the ground, falling itself with him. But whereas
+in one second the masked man was up again and on his guard, Ampoule
+rose not. A few twitches of the limbs, a stifled groan, an arm flung
+wide, a gasp, and as he had seen many another pass, through the gate
+by which he had sent not a few, Ampoule passed himself. Of so thin a
+texture is the web of life, and so slight the thing that suffices to
+tear it. Had the masked stranger ridden another road that night, had
+he been a little later, had he been a little sooner; had the trooper
+refrained from his jest or the men from the wine-pot, had Roger kept
+his distance, or the arrow-slit looked another way--had any one of
+these chance occasions fallen other than it fell, Ampoule had lived,
+and others perchance had died by his hand!
+
+All passed, it has been said, with incredible swiftness; the attack so
+furious, the end a lightning-stroke. Roger on the bridge awoke from a
+doubt of his ally's courage to see a whirl, a blow, a fall; and then
+on the ground ill-lighted and indistinct--for half the men had dropped
+their lights in their excitement--he saw a grim picture, a man dying,
+and another crouching a pace from him, watching with shortened point
+and bent knees for a possible uprising.
+
+But none came; Ampoule had lived. And presently, still watching
+cautiously, the mask raised himself and dropped his point. A shiver, a
+groan passed round the square. A single man swore aloud. Finally three
+or four, shaking off the stupor of amazement, moved forwards, and with
+their eyes assured themselves that their officer was dead.
+
+At that Roger, still looking on as one fascinated, shook himself
+awake, in fear for his principal. He expected that an attack would be
+made on the masked man. None was made, however, no one raised hand or
+voice. But as he moved towards him, to support him were it needful,
+the unexpected happened. The unknown tottered a pace or two, leant a
+moment on his sword-point, swayed, and slowly sank down on the ground.
+
+With a cry of despair Roger sprang to him, and by the gloomy light of
+the three brands which still remained ablaze, he saw that blood was
+welling fast from a wound in the masked man's shoulder. Ampoule had
+passed, but not without his toll.
+
+Roger forgot the danger. Kneeling, following his instinct, he took the
+fainting man's head on his shoulder. But he was helpless in his
+ignorance; he knew not how to aid him. And it was one of the troopers,
+late his enemies, who, kneeling beside him, quickly and deftly cut
+away the breast of the injured man's shirt, and with a piece of linen,
+doubled and redoubled, staunched the flow of blood. The others stood
+round the while, one or two lending a light, their fellows looking on
+in silence. Roger, even in his distress, wondered at their attitude.
+It would not have surprised him if the men had fallen on the stranger
+and killed him out of hand. Instead they bent over the wounded man
+with looks of curiosity; with looks gloomy indeed, but in which awe
+and admiration had their part. Presently at his back a man muttered.
+
+"The devil, or a Joyeuse!" he said. "No other, I'll be sworn!"
+
+No one answered, but the man who was dressing the wound lifted the
+unknown's hand and silently showed a ring set with stones that even by
+that flickering and doubtful light dazzled the eye. They were stones
+such as Roger had never seen, and he fancied that they must be of
+inestimable value.
+
+"Ay, ay!" the man who had spoken muttered. "I thought it was so when I
+saw him join! I mind his brother, the day he died, taking two of his
+own men so, and--pouf! I saw him drown an hour after, and he took the
+water just so, cursing and swearing; but the Tarn was too strong for
+him."
+
+"That was Duke Antony?" a second whispered.
+
+"Antony Scipio."
+
+"I never saw him," the second speaker answered softly. "Duke Anne at
+Coutras--I saw him die; and des Ageaux, that is now Governor of
+Périgord, got just such a wound as that in trying to save him."
+
+"Pouf! All the world knew _him!_" he who had first spoken rejoined
+with the scorn of superior knowledge. "But"--to the man who was
+binding up the hurt, and who had all but finished his task--"you had
+better look and make sure that we shall not have our trouble for
+nothing."
+
+The trooper nodded and began to feel for the fastening of the mask,
+which was of strong silk on a stiff frame. Roger raised his hand to
+prevent him, but as quickly repressed the impulse. The men were saving
+the man's life, and had a right to learn who he was. Besides, sooner
+or later, the thing must come off.
+
+Its removal was not easy. But at length the man found the catch, it
+gave way, and the morsel of black fell and disclosed the pale,
+handsome face of an effeminate, fair-haired man of about thirty. "Ay,
+it is he! It is he, sure enough!" went around the circle, with here
+and there an oath of astonishment.
+
+"Has any one a mouthful of Armagnac?" the impromptu surgeon asked.
+"No, not wine. There now, gently between his lips. When he has
+swallowed a little we must lift him into the house. He will do well, I
+think."
+
+"But," Roger asked, after in vain interrogating their faces with his
+eyes, "who is it? Who it is, if you please? You know him?"
+
+"Ay, we know him," the trooper answered sententiously. And, rising to
+his feet, he looked about him. "Best close that gate," he said,
+raising his voice. "If his people be on his track, as is likely, and
+come on us before we can make it clear, it may be awkward! See to it,
+some of you. And do you, Jasper, take horse and tell the Captain, and
+get his orders."
+
+Two or three of the men, whom the event had most sobered, strode
+across the court to do his bidding. Roger looked from one to another
+of those who remained. "But who is he?" he asked. His curiosity was
+piqued, the more sharply as it was evident that the presence of this
+man who lay before him, wounded and unconscious, altered, in some
+fashion, the whole position.
+
+"Who is he?" the former spokesman answered roughly. "Father Angel, to
+be sure! You have heard of him, I suppose, young sir?"
+
+"Father Angel?" Roger repeated incredulously. "A priest? Impossible!"
+
+"Well, a monk."
+
+"A monk?"
+
+"Ay, and a marshal for the matter of that!" the trooper rejoined
+impatiently. "Here, lift him, you! Gently, gently! Man, it is the Duke
+of Joyeuse," he continued, addressing Roger. "You have heard of him, I
+take it? Now, step together, men, and you won't shake him! We must lay
+him in the dining-hall. He will do well there." And again to Roger,
+who walked with him behind the bearers, "If you don't believe me, see
+here," he said. "Tis plain enough still!" And taking a burning
+splinter of wood from one of the others he held it so that the light
+fell on the crown of the wounded man's head. There discernible amid
+the long fair hair was the pale shadow of a tonsure.
+
+"Father Angel?" Roger repeated in wonder, as the men bearing their
+burden stepped slowly and warily on to the bridge.
+
+"Ay, no other! And riding on what mad errand God knows! It was an
+unlucky one for Ampoule. But they are all mad in that house! Coutras
+saw the end of one brother, Villemar of another; there are but this
+one and the Cardinal left! Look your fill," he continued, as the men
+under his direction carried their burden up the three or four steps
+that led from the outer hall--where the fire Ampoule had knocked
+together still burned on the dogs--to the dining-hall. "Monk and
+Marshal, Duke and Capuchin, angel and devil, you'll never see the like
+again!"
+
+Probably his words were not far from the mark. Anne, the eldest of the
+four brothers, by whom and by whose interest with King Henry the Third
+the house had risen from mediocrity to greatness, from respectability
+to fame, had fallen at Coutras encircled by the old nobility whom he
+had led to defeat. His brother, Antony Scipio, young as he was, had
+taken charge for the League in Languedoc, had pitted himself against
+the experience of Montmorency, and for a time had carried it. But his
+minor successes had ended in a crushing defeat at Villemar on the
+Tarn, and he had drowned his chagrin in its icy waters, cursing and
+swearing, says the old chronicler, to the last. The event had drawn
+from his monastery the singular man on whom Roger now looked, Henry,
+third of the brothers, third Duke of the name, the fame of whose piety
+within the cloister was only surpassed by that of his excesses in the
+world; who added to an emotional temperament and its sister gift of
+eloquence the feverish energy and headlong courage of his race.
+Snatching the sword fallen from his brother's hands, in five and
+twenty months he had used it with such effect as to win from the King
+the baton of a marshal as the price of his obedience.
+
+"M. de Joyeuse!" Roger muttered, as he watched them lay the
+unconscious man on an improvised couch in the corner. "M. de Joyeuse?
+It seems incredible!"
+
+"There is nothing credible about them," the man answered darkly. "The
+old fool who keeps the gate here would try the belief of most with his
+fables. But he'll never put the handle to their hatchet," with a nod
+of meaning. "Yet to listen to him, Charlemagne and the twelve were not
+on a level with his master--once! But where are you going, young sir?"
+in an altered tone.
+
+"To tell the Vicomte what has occurred," Roger answered, his hand on
+the latch of the inner door--the door that led to the stairs and the
+upper rooms.
+
+"By your leave!"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"By your leave, I say!" the trooper answered more sharply, and in a
+twinkling he had intervened, turned the key in the lock and withdrawn
+it. "I am sorry, young sir," he continued, coolly facing about again,
+"but until we know what is to do, and what the Captain's orders
+are--he has a trump card in his hand now, or I am mistaken--I must
+keep you here, by your leave."
+
+"Against my leave!"
+
+"As you please for that."
+
+"I should have though that you had had enough of keeping people!"
+Roger retorted angrily.
+
+"May-be Ampoule has," the man answered with a faint sneer. "I'll see
+if I have not better luck. Come, young sir," he continued with
+good-humour, "you cannot say that I have been aught but gentle so far.
+You've fared better with me, ay, a _mort_ better, than you'd have
+fared if the Captain had been here. But I don't want to have to hurt
+you if it comes to blows upstairs. You are safer here looking after
+the Duke. And trust me, you'll thank me, some day."
+
+Roger glared at him in resentment. He felt that he who lay helpless in
+the corner would have known how to deal with the man and the
+situation; but, for himself, he did not. To attempt force was out of
+the question, and the trooper had withdrawn and closed the door,
+leaving Roger alone with the patient, before the idea of bribery
+occurred to the lad. It was as well perhaps; for what was there at
+Villeneuve, what had they in that poverty-stricken home of such a
+value as to outweigh the wrath of Vlaye? Or to corrupt men who had
+seen, without daring to touch, a ring worth a King's ransom?
+
+Nothing, for certain, which it was in Roger's power to give. Moreover,
+the situation, though full of peril, seemed less desperate. The Duke's
+act, if it had wrought no more, had sobered the men, and his presence,
+wounded as he was, was a factor Roger could not estimate. The respect
+with which the men treated him when he lay at their mercy, and their
+care to do the best for him, to say nothing of the feelings of awe and
+admiration in which they held him--these things promised well. The
+question was, how would his presence affect M. de Vlaye? And his
+pursuit of the Countess?
+
+Roger had no notion. The possession of the person of a prince who
+ruled a great part of Languedoc might touch the Captain of Vlaye--a
+minnow by comparison, but in his own water--in a number of ways. It
+might strengthen him in his present design, or it might turn him from
+it by opening some new prospect to his ambition. Again, M. de Vlaye
+might treat the Duke in one of several modes; as an enemy, as a
+friend, as a hostage. He might use the occasion well or ill. He might
+work on fears or gratitude. All to Roger was dark and uncertain; as
+dark as the courtyard, where the flames of the huge fire had sunk low,
+and men by the dull glow of the red embers were removing in a cloak
+the body of the unfortunate Ampoule. Ay, and as uncertain as the
+breathing of the wounded man in the corner, which now seemed to stop,
+and now hurried weakly on.
+
+Roger paced the room. He did not know for certain what had become of
+the Countess, or of his sister, or of his father. He took it for
+granted that they had sought the greater safety of the upper rooms. He
+had himself, earlier in the evening, suggested that if the worst
+threatened they might retreat to the tower chamber, and there defend
+themselves; but the Vicomte had pooh-poohed the suggestion, and though
+Bonne, who persisted in expecting help from outside, had supported it,
+the plan had been given up. Still they were gone, and they could have
+retired no other way. He listened at the locked door, hoping to hear
+feet on the stairs; for they must be anxious about him. But all was
+still. His sister, the Countess, the Vicomte, might have melted into
+the air--as far as he was concerned.
+
+And this, anxious as he was for them, vexed him. He had failed! The
+long silence that had brooded over the decaying house, the dull life
+against which he and his brother had fretted, were come to an end with
+a vengeance. But what use had he made of the opportunity? When he
+should have been playing the hero upstairs, when he should have been
+the head and front of the defence, directing all, inspiring all, he
+lay here in a locked room like a naughty child who must be shielded
+from harm.
+
+A movement on the part of the sick man cut short his thoughts. The
+Duke was making futile attempts to raise himself on his elbow.
+"Ageaux! Des Ageaux!" he muttered. "You are satisfied now! I struck
+him fairly."
+
+Roger hurried to him and leant over him. "Lie still and do not speak,"
+he said, hoping to soothe him.
+
+"We are quits now," the Duke whispered. "We are quits now. Say so,
+man!" he continued querulously. "I tell you Vlaye will trouble you no
+more. I struck him fairly in the throat."
+
+"Yes, yes," Roger replied. It was evident that the Duke was rambling
+in his mind, and took him for some one else. "We are quits now."
+
+"Quits," the wounded man muttered, as if he found some magic in the
+words. And he drowsed off again into the half-sleep, half-swoon of
+exhaustion.
+
+Roger could make nothing of it, except that the Duke had Vlaye in his
+mind, and fancied that it was he whom he had killed. But des Ageaux,
+whom he fancied he was addressing? Roger knew him by name and that he
+was Governor of Périgord, a man of name and position beyond his rank.
+But how came he in this galley? Oh, yes. He remembered now. His name
+had been mentioned in connection with the death of the eldest Joyeuse
+at Coutras.
+
+Roger snuffed the candles, and mixing a little wine with water, put it
+by the Duke's side. Then he wandered to the locked door, and again
+listened fruitlessly. Thence, for he could not rest, he went to the
+window, where he pressed his forehead against the cool glass. The fire
+had sunk lower; it was now no more than an angry eye glowing in the
+darkness. He could discern little by its light. No one moved, the
+courtyard seemed as vacant and deserted as the house. Or no. In the
+direction of the gate he caught the glint of a lanthorn and the
+movement of several figures, revealed for an instant and as suddenly
+obscured. He continued to watch the place where the light had
+vanished, and presently out of the obscurity grew a black mass that
+slowly took the form of a number of men crossing the court in a silent
+body, five or six abreast. The tramp of their feet, inaudible on the
+soil, rumbled hollowly as they mounted the bridge, which creaked
+beneath them. He caught the gleam of weapons, heard a low order given,
+fell back from the window. He had little doubt what they were about to
+do.
+
+He was right. The heavy, noisy entry into the outer hall had scarcely
+prepared him before the door was thrown open and they filed into the
+room in which he stood.
+
+What could he do? Resistance was out of the question. "What is it?" he
+asked, making a show of confronting them.
+
+"No matter, young sir," the man who had before taken charge answered
+gruffly. "Stand you on one side and no harm will happen to you."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Stand back! Stand back!" the man answered sternly. "We are on no
+boy's errand!" Then to his party, "Bring the lights," he continued,
+and advancing to the inner door he unlocked it. "Who has the hammer?
+Good, do you come first with me. And let the last two stand here and
+keep the door."
+
+He went through without more words, and disappeared up the staircase,
+followed by his men in single file. The two last remained on guard at
+the door, and they and Roger waited in the semi-darkness listening to
+the lumbering tread of the troopers as they stumbled on the wooden
+stairs, or their weapons clanged against the wall. Roger clenched his
+hands hard, vowing vengeance; but what could he do? And he had one
+consolation. Ampoule's death had sobered the men. They would execute
+their orders, but the fear of outrage and excess which had dwelt on
+his mind earlier in the evening no longer seemed serious.
+
+The sound of the men's feet on the stairs had ceased; he guessed that
+they were searching the rooms overhead. A moment later their movements
+made this clear. He heard their returning footsteps and their raised
+voices in the upper passage. They seemed to confer, and to halt for a
+minute undecided. Then a door, doubtless the one which led to the
+roof, was tried, and tried again. But in vain, for the next moment a
+voice cried harshly, "Open! Open!" and after an interval a crash,
+twice repeated, proclaimed that the hammer was being brought into use.
+A scrambling of hasty feet followed, and then silence--doubtless they
+were crossing the roof--and then a pistol shot! One pistol shot!
+
+Roger glared at the men who had been left with him. They opened the
+door more widely, and stepping through seemed to listen. For a moment
+the wild notion of locking the door on them, of locking the door on
+all, occurred to Roger. But he discarded it.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                           SPEEDY JUSTICE.
+
+
+The elder of the Villeneuve brothers was less happy than Roger, in
+that the Vicomte had passed to him a portion of his crabbed nature.
+Something of the bitterness, something of the hardness of the father
+lurked in the son; who in the like unfortunate circumstances might
+have grown to be such another as his sire, but with more happy
+surroundings and a better fate still had it in him to become a
+generous and kindly gentleman.
+
+It was this latent crabbedness that had kept the injustice of his lot
+ever before his gaze. Roger bore lightly with his heavier burden, and
+only the patient sweetness of his eyes told tales. Bonne was almost
+content; if she fretted it was for others, and if she dreamed of the
+ancient glories of the house, it was not for the stiff brocades and
+jewelled stomacher of her grandame that she pined.
+
+But with Charles it was otherwise. The honour of the family was more
+to him, for he was the heir. Its dignity and welfare were his in a
+particular sense; and had he been of the most easy disposition, he
+must still have found it hard to see all passing; to see the end, and
+to stand by with folded arms. But when to the misery of inaction and
+the hopelessness of the outlook were added the Vicomte's daily and
+hourly taunts, and all fell on a nature that had in it the seeds of
+unhappiness, what wonder if the young man broke away and sought in
+action, however desperate, a remedy for his pains?
+
+A step which he would now have given the world to undo. As he rode a
+prisoner along the familiar track, which he had trodden a thousand
+times in freedom and safety, the iron entered into his soul. The sun
+shone, the glades were green, in a hundred brakes the birds sang, in
+shady dells and under oaks the dew sparkled; but he rode, his feet
+fastened under his horse's belly, his face set towards Vlaye. In an
+hour the dungeon door would close on him. He would have given the
+world, had it been his, to undo the step.
+
+Not that he feared the dungeon so much, or even death; though the
+thought of death, amid the woodland beauty of this June day, carried a
+chill all its own, and death comes cold to him who awaits it with tied
+hands. But he could have faced death cheerfully--or he thought so--had
+he fallen into a stranger's power; had the victory not been so
+immediately, so easily, so completely with Vlaye--whom he hated. To be
+dragged thus before his foe, to read in that sneering face the
+contempt which events had justified, to lie at his mercy who had
+treated him as a silly clownish lad, to be subjected, may-be, to some
+contemptuous degrading punishment--this was a prospect worse than
+death, a prospect maddening, insupportable! Therefore he looked on the
+woodland with eyes of despair, and now and again, in fits of revolt,
+had much ado not to fight with his bonds, or hurl unmanly insults at
+his captors.
+
+They, for their part, took little heed of him. They had not bound his
+hands, but had tied the reins of his horse to one of their saddles,
+and, satisfied with this precaution, they left him to his reflections.
+By-and-by those reflections turned, as the thoughts of all captives
+turn, to the chance of escape; and he marked that the men--they
+numbered five--seemed to be occupied with something which interested
+them more than their prisoner. What it was, of what nature or kind, he
+had no notion; but he observed that as surely as they recalled their
+duty and drew round him, so surely did the lapse of two or three
+minutes find them dispersed again in pairs--it might be behind, it
+might be before him.
+
+When this happened they talked low, but with an absorption so entire
+that once he saw a man jam his knee against a sapling which he failed
+to see, though it stood in his path; and once a man's hat was struck
+from his head by a bough which he might have avoided by stooping.
+
+Naturally the trooper to whose saddle he was attached had no part in
+these conferences. And by-and-by this man, a grizzled, thick-set
+fellow with small eyes, grew impatient, and even, it seemed,
+suspicious. For a time he vented his dissatisfaction in grunts and
+looks, but at last, when the four others had got together and were
+colloguing with heads so close that a saddle-cloth would have covered
+them, he could bear it no longer.
+
+"Come, enough of that!" he cried surlily. "One of you take him, and
+let me hear what you have settled. I'd like my say as well as
+another."
+
+"Ay, ay, Baptist," one of the four answered. "In a minute, my lad."
+
+Baptist swore under his breath. Still he waited, and by-and-by one of
+the men came grudgingly back, took over the prisoner, and suffered
+Baptist to join the council. But Villeneuve, whose attention was now
+roused, noted that this man also, after an interval, became restless.
+He watched his comrades with jealous eyes, and from time to time he
+pressed nearer, as if he would fain surprise their talk. Things were
+in this position when the party arrived at a brook, bordered on either
+side by willow beds and rushes, and passable at a tiny ford. Beyond
+the brook the hill rose suddenly and steeply. Charles knew the place
+as he knew his hand, and that from the brook the track wound up
+through the brushwood to a nick in the summit of the hill, whence
+Vlaye could be seen a league below.
+
+The four troopers paused at the ford, and letting their horses drink,
+permitted the prisoner and his guard to come up. The man they called
+Baptist approached the latter. "If you will wait here," he said, with
+a look of meaning, "we'll look to the--you know what."
+
+"I? No, cursed if I do!" the man answered plumply, his swarthy face
+growing dark. "I'm not a fool!"
+
+"Then how in the devil's name are we to do it?" Baptist retorted with
+irritation.
+
+"Stay yourself and take care of him!"
+
+"And let you find the stuff!" with an ugly look. "A nice reckoning I
+should get afterwards."
+
+"Well, I won't stay, that's flat!"
+
+The men looked at one another, and their lowering glances disclosed
+their embarrassment. The prisoner could make no guess at the subject
+of discussion, but he saw that they were verging on a quarrel, and his
+heart beat fast. Given the slightest chance he was resolved to take
+it. But, that his thoughts might not be read, he kept his eyes on the
+ground, and feigned a sullenness which he no longer felt.
+
+Suddenly, "Tie him to a tree!" muttered one of the men with a sidelong
+look at him.
+
+"And leave him?"
+
+"Ay, why not?"
+
+"Why not?" Baptist, the eldest of the men, rejoined with an oath.
+"Because if harm happen to him, it will be I will pay for it, and not
+you! That is why not!"
+
+"Tie him well and what can happen?" the other retorted. And then,
+"Must risk something, Baptist," he added with a grin, which showed
+that he saw his advantage, "since you are in charge."
+
+The secret was simple. The men had got wind that morning of a saddle
+and saddle-bags--and a dead horse, but that counted for nothing--that
+in the search after the attack on the Countess's party had been
+overlooked in the scrub. Detached to guard the prisoner to Vlaye they
+had grinned at the chance of forestalling their comrades and gaining
+what there was to gain; which fancy, ever sanguine, painted in the
+richest colours. But the five could neither trust one another nor
+their prisoner; for Charles might inform Vlaye, and in that case they
+would not only lose the spoil but taste the strapado--the Captain of
+Vlaye permitting but one robber in his band. Hence they stood in the
+position of the ass between two bundles of hay, and dared not leave
+their prisoner, nor would leave the spoil.
+
+At length, after some debate, made up in the main of oaths, "Draw lots
+who stays!" one suggested.
+
+"We have no cards."
+
+"There are other ways."
+
+"Well," said he who had charge of the prisoner, "whose horse stops
+drinking first--let him stay!"
+
+"Oh, yes!" retorted Baptist. "And we have watered our horses and you
+have not!"
+
+The man grinned feebly; the others laughed. "Well," he said, "do you
+hit on something then! You think yourself clever."
+
+Villeneuve bethought him of the prince who set, his guards to race,
+and, when their horses were spent, galloped away laughing. But he
+dared not suggest that, though he tingled with anxiety. "Who sees a
+heron first," said one.
+
+But "Pooh!" with a grin, "we are all liars!" put an end to that.
+
+"Well," said Baptist sulkily, "if we stay here a while longer we shall
+all lie for nothing, for we shall have the Captain upon us."
+
+Thus spurred a man had an idea that seemed fair. "We've no two
+horses alike," he said. "Let us pluck a hair from the tail of each.
+He"--pointing to Charles--"shall draw one with his eyes shut, and
+whoever is drawn shall stay on guard."
+
+They agreed to this, and Charles, being applied to, consented with a
+sulky air to play his part. The hairs were plucked, a grey, a
+chestnut, a bay, a black, and a sorrel; and the prisoner, foreseeing
+that he would be left with a single trooper, and determined in that
+case to essay escape, shut his eyes and felt for the five hairs, and
+selected one. The man drawn was the man who had last had him in
+charge, and to whose saddle his reins were still attached.
+
+The man cursed his ill-fortune; the others laughed. "All the same," he
+cried, "if you play me false you'll laugh on the other side of your
+faces!"
+
+"Tut, tut, Martin!" they jeered in answer. "Have no fear!" And they
+scarce made a secret of their intention to cheat him.
+
+The four turned, laughing, and plunged into the undergrowth which
+clothed the hill. Still their course could be traced by the snapping
+of dry sticks, the scramble of a horse on a steep place, or the scared
+notes of blackbirds, fleeing low among the bushes. Slowly Martin's
+eyes followed their progress along the hill, and as his eyes moved, he
+moved also, foot by foot, through the brook, glaring, listening, and
+now and then muttering threats in his beard.
+
+Had he glanced round once, however impatiently, and seen the pale face
+and feverish eyes at his elbow, he had taken the alarm. Charles knew
+that the thing must be done now or not at all; and that there must be
+one critical moment. If nerve failed him then, or the man turned, or
+aught happened to thwart his purpose midway, he had far better have
+left the thing untried.
+
+Now or not at all! He glanced over his shoulder and saw the sun
+shining on the flat rushy plat beyond the ford, which the horses' feet
+had fouled while their riders debated. He saw no sign of Vlaye coming
+up, nor anything to alarm him. The road was clear were he once free.
+Martin's horse had stepped from the water, his own was in act to
+follow, his guard sat, therefore, a little higher than himself; in a
+flash he stooped, seized the other's boot, and with a desperate heave
+flung him over on the off side.
+
+He clutched, as the man fell, at his reins; they were life or death to
+him. But though the fellow let them slip, the frightened horse sprang
+aside, and swung them out of reach. There remained but one thing he
+could do; he struck his own horse in the hope it would run away and
+drag the other with it.
+
+But the other, rearing and plunging, backed from him, and the two,
+pulling in different directions, held their ground until the trooper
+had risen, run to his horse's head and caught the reins. "Body of
+Satan!" he panted with a pale scowl; the fall had shaken him. "I'll
+have your blood for this! Quiet, beast! Quiet!"
+
+In his passion he struck the horse on the head; an act which carried
+its punishment. The beast backed from him and dragged him, still
+clinging to the reins, into the brook. In a moment the two horses were
+plunging about in the water, and he following them was knee deep.
+Unfortunately Villeneuve was helpless. All he could do was to strike
+his horse and excite it further. But the man would not let go, and the
+horses, fastened together, circled round one another until the
+trooper, notwithstanding their movements, managed to shorten the
+reins, and at last got his horse by the bit.
+
+"Curse you!" he said again. "Now I've got you! And in a minute, my
+lad, I'll make you pay for this!"
+
+But Villeneuve, seeing defeat stare him in the face, had made use of
+the last few seconds. He had loosened the stirrup-leather from the
+trooper's saddle, and as the fellow, thinking the struggle over,
+grinned at him, he swung the heavy iron in the air, and brought it
+down on the beast's withers. It leapt forward, maddened by pain,
+dashed the man to the ground, and dragging Villeneuve's horse with it,
+whether it would or no, in a moment both were clear of the brook and
+plunging along the bank.
+
+Villeneuve struck the horses again to urge them forward; but only to
+learn that which he should have recognised before; that to escape on a
+horse, fastened to a second, over difficult ground and through a wood,
+was not possible. Half-maddened, half-bewildered, they bore him into a
+mass of thorns and bushes. It was all he could do to guard his eyes
+and head, more than they could do to keep their feet. A moment and a
+tough sapling intervened, the rein which joined them snapped, and his
+horse, giving to the tug at its mouth, fell on its near shoulder.
+
+Bound to his saddle, he could not save himself, but fortunately the
+soil was soft, the leg that was under the horse was not broken, and
+for a moment the animal made no effort to rise. Villeneuve, despair in
+his heart, and the sweat running down his face, had no power to rise.
+Nor would the power have availed him, for before he could have gone a
+dozen paces through the tangle of thorns, the troopers, some on
+horseback, and some on foot, were on him.
+
+The man from whom he had escaped was a couple of paces in front of the
+others. He had snatched up a stick, and black with rage, raised it to
+strike the prostrate horse. Had the blow fallen and the horse
+struggled to his feet, Villeneuve must have been trampled. Fortunately
+Baptist was in time to catch the man's arm and stay the blow. "Fool!"
+he said. "Do you want to kill the man?"
+
+"Ay, by Heaven!" the fellow shrieked. "He nearly killed me!"
+
+"Well, you'll not do it!" Baptist retorted, and he pushed him back.
+"Do you hear? I have no mind to account for his loss to the Captain,
+if you have."
+
+"Do you think that I am going to be pitched on my head by a
+Jack-a-dandy like that," the fellow snarled, "and do naught? And where
+is my share?"
+
+The grizzled man stooped, and, while one of his comrades held down the
+horse's head, untied Villeneuve's feet, and drew him from under the
+beast. "Share?" he answered with a sneer as he rose. "What time had we
+to find the thing?"
+
+"You have not found it?"
+
+"No--thanks to you! What kind of a guard do you call yourself?"
+Baptist continued ferociously. "By this time, had you done your part,
+we had done ours! If there is to be any accounting, you'll account to
+us!"
+
+"Ay," the others cried, "Baptist is right, my lad!"
+
+The man, seeing himself outnumbered, cast a devilish look at them. He
+turned on his heel. When he was gone a couple of paces, "Very good,"
+he said over his shoulder, "but when I get you alone----"
+
+"You!" Baptist roared, and took three strides towards him. "You, when
+you get me alone! Stand to me now, then, and let them see what you
+will do!"
+
+But the malcontent, with the same look of hate, continued to retreat.
+Baptist jeered. "That is better!" he said. "But we knew what you were
+before! Now, lads, to horse, we've lost time enough!"
+
+Flinging a mocking laugh after the craven the troopers turned. But to
+meet with a surprise. By their horses' heads stood a strange man
+smiling at them. "I arrest all here!" he said quietly. He had nothing
+but a riding switch in his hand, and Villeneuve's eyes opened wide as
+he recognised in him the guest of the Tower Chamber. "In the King's
+name, lay down your arms!"
+
+They stared at him as if he had fallen from the skies. Even Baptist
+lost the golden moment, and, in place of flinging himself upon the
+stranger, repeated, "Lay down our arms? Who, in the name of thunder,
+are you?"
+
+"No matter!" the other answered. "You are surrounded, my man. See! And
+see!" He pointed in two directions with his switch.
+
+Baptist glared through the bushes, and saw eight or ten horsemen
+posted along the hill-side above him. He looked across the brook, and
+there also were two or three stalwart figures, seated motionless in
+their saddles.
+
+The others looked helplessly to Baptist. "Understand," he said, with
+uneasy defiance. "You will answer for this. We are the Captain of
+Vlaye's men!"
+
+"I know naught of the Captain of Vlaye," was the stern reply.
+"Surrender, and your lives shall be spared. Resist, and your blood be
+on your own heads!"
+
+Baptist counted heads rapidly, and saw that he was outnumbered. He
+gave the word, and after one fashion or another, some recklessly, some
+stolidly, the men threw down their arms. "Only--you will answer for
+this!" Baptist repeated.
+
+"I shall answer for it," des Ageaux replied gravely. "In the meantime
+I desire a word with your prisoner. M. de Villeneuve, this way if you
+please."
+
+He was proceeding to lead Charles a little apart. But his back had not
+been turned three seconds when a thing happened. The man who had slunk
+away before Baptist's challenge had got to horse unnoticed. At a
+little distance from the others, he had not surrendered his arms.
+Whether he could not from where he was see the horsemen who guarded
+the further side of the brook, and so thought escape in that direction
+open, or he could not resist the temptation to wreak his spite on
+Baptist at all risks, he chose this moment to ride up behind him, draw
+a pistol from the holster, and fire it into the unfortunate man's
+back. Then with a yell that echoed his victim's death-cry he crashed
+through the undergrowth in the direction of the brook.
+
+But already, "Seize him! Seize him!" rose above the wood in a dozen
+voices. "On your life, seize him!"
+
+The order was executed almost as soon as uttered. As the horse leaping
+the water alighted on the lower bank, it swerved to avoid a trooper
+who barred the way. The turn surprised the rider; he lost his balance.
+Before he could get back into his seat, a trooper knocked him from the
+saddle with the flat of his sword. In a trice he was seized, disarmed,
+and dragged across the brook.
+
+But by that time Baptist, with three slugs under his shoulder-blade,
+lay still among the moss and briars, the hand that had beaten time to
+a thousand camp-ditties in a thousand quarters from Fontarabie to
+Flanders flung nerveless beside a wood-wren's nest. As they gathered
+round him Charles, who had never seen a violent death, gazed on the
+limp form with a pale face, questioning, with that wonder which the
+thoughtful of all times have felt, whither the mind that a minute
+before looked from those sightless eyes had taken its flight.
+
+He was roused by the Lieutenant's voice, speaking in tones measured
+and stern as fate. "Let him have five minutes," he said, "and
+then--that tree will be best!"
+
+They began to drag the wretch, now pale as ashes, in the direction
+indicated. Half way to the tree the man began to struggle, breaking
+into piercing shrieks that he was Vlaye's man, that they had no
+right----
+
+"Stay, right he shall have!" des Ageaux cried solemnly. "He is judged
+and doomed by me, Governor of Périgord, for murder in Curia. In the
+King's name! Now take him!"
+
+The wretch was dragged off, his judge to all appearance deaf to his
+cries. But Charles could close neither his ears nor his heart. The man
+had earned his doom richly. But to stand by while a fellow-creature,
+vainly shrieking for mercy, mercy, was strangled within his hearing,
+turned him sick and faint.
+
+Des Ageaux read his thoughts. "To spare here were to kill there," he
+said coldly. "Learn, my friend, that to rule men is no work for a soft
+heart or a gentle hand. But you are shaken. Come this way," he
+continued in a different tone; "you will be the better for some wine."
+He took out a flask and gave it to Charles, who, excessively thirsty
+now he thought of it, drank greedily. "That is better," des Ageaux
+went on, seeing the colour return to his cheeks. "Now I wish for
+information. Where are the nearest Crocans?"
+
+The young man's face fell. "The nearest Crocans?" he muttered
+mechanically.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I----"
+
+"Are there any within three hours' ride of us?"
+
+But Charles had by this time pulled himself together. He held out his
+wrists. "I am your prisoner," he said. "Call up your men and bind me.
+You can do with me as you please. But I am a Villeneuve, and I do not
+betray."
+
+"Not even----"
+
+"You saw me turn pale?" the young man continued. "Believe me, I can
+bear to go to the tree better than to see another dragged there!"
+
+Des Ageaux smiled. "Nay, but you mistake me, M. de Villenueve," he
+said. "I ask you to betray no one. It is I who wish to enlist with
+you."
+
+"With us?" Charles exclaimed. And he stared in bewilderment.
+
+"With you. In fact you see before you," des Ageaux continued, his eyes
+twinkling, his hand stroking his short beard, "a Crocan. Frankly, and
+to be quite plain, I want their help; a little later my help may save
+them. They fear an attack by the Captain of Vlaye? I am prepared to
+aid them against him. Afterwards----"
+
+"Ay, afterwards."
+
+"If they will hear reason, what can be done in their behalf I will do!
+But there must be no Jacquerie, no burning, and no plundering. In a
+word," with a flitting smile, "it is now for the Crocans to say
+whether the Captain of Vlaye shall earn the King's pardon by quelling
+them--or they by quelling him."
+
+"But you are the Governor of Périgord?" Charles exclaimed.
+
+"I am the King's Lieutenant in Périgord, which is the same thing."
+
+"And in this business?"
+
+"I am in the position of the finger which is set between the door
+and the jamb! But no matter for that, you will not understand. Only
+do you tell me where these Crocans lie, and we will visit them if it
+can be done before night. To-night I must be back"--with a peculiar
+look--"for I have other business."
+
+Charles told him, and with joy. Ay, with joy. As a sail to the
+raft-borne seaman awash in the Biscayan Gulf, or a fountain to the
+parched wanderer in La Mancha, this and more to him was the prospect
+suddenly opened before his eyes. To be snatched at a word from the
+false position in which he had placed himself, and from which naught
+short of a miracle could save him! To find for ally, instead of the
+broken farmers and ruined clowns, the governor of a great province! To
+be free to carve his fortune with his right hand where he would!
+These, indeed, were blessings that a minute before had seemed as far
+from him as home from the seaman who feels his craft settling down in
+a shoreless water.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                           MIDNIGHT ALARMS.
+
+
+Bonne's first thought when her brother darted to the stranger's rescue
+was to seek aid from Ampoule, who, it will be remembered, sat drinking
+beside the fire in the outer hall. But the man's coarse address, and
+the nature of his employment at the moment, checked the impulse; and
+the girl returned to the window, and, flattening her face against the
+panes, sought to learn what fortune her brother had. The fire, still
+burning high, cast its light as far as the gateway. But the tower to
+which Roger had hastened, being in a line with the window, was not
+visible, and though Bonne pressed her face as closely as possible
+against the panes, she could discover nothing. Yet her brother did not
+come back. The murmur of jeers and laughter persisted, but he did not
+appear.
+
+She turned at last, impelled to seek aid from some one. But at sight
+of the room, womanish panic took her by the throat, and the hysterical
+fit almost overcame her. For what help, what hope of help, lay in any
+of those whom she saw round her? The Countess indeed had crept to her
+side, and cast her arm about her, but she was a child, and ashake
+already. For the others, the Vicomte sat sunk in lethargy, heeding no
+one, ignorant apparently that his son had left the room; and Fulbert,
+whose wits had exhausted themselves in the effort that had saved his
+mistress, stood faithful indeed, but brainless, dull, dumb. Only
+Solomon, who leant against the wall beside the door, his old face
+gloomy, his eyebrows knit, only to him could she look for a spark of
+comfort or suggestion. He, it was clear, appreciated the crisis, for
+he was listening intently, his head inclined, his hand on a weapon.
+But he was old, and there was not a man of Vlaye's troopers who was
+not more than a match for him foot to foot.
+
+Still, he was her only hope, if her brother did not return. And she
+turned again to the casement, and, scarcely breathing, listened with a
+keenness of anxiety almost indescribable. If only Roger would return!
+Roger, who had seemed so weak a prop a few minutes before, and who,
+now that she had lost him, seemed everything! But the voices of
+Ampoule and his companion disputing in the outer hall rose louder,
+drowning more distant sounds; and the minutes were passing. And still
+Roger did not return.
+
+Then a thought came to her; or rather two thoughts. The first was that
+all now hung on her--and that steadied her. The second, that he whose
+grasp had brought the blood to her cheeks that morning had bidden her
+hold out to the last, fight to the last, play the man to the last; and
+this moved her to action. Better do anything than succumb like her
+father. She flew to Solomon, dragging the Countess with her.
+
+"We are not safe here," she said. "These men are drinking. They have
+kept Roger, and that bodes us no good. Were it not better to go
+upstairs to the Tower Room?"
+
+"It were the best course," the old man answered slowly, with his eyes
+on the Vicomte. "Out and away the best course, mademoiselle. Fulbert
+and I could guard the stairs awhile at any rate."
+
+"Then let us go!"
+
+But he looked at the Vicomte. "If my lord says so," he answered. All
+his life the Vicomte's word had been his law.
+
+In a moment she was at her father's side. "The Countess will be safer
+upstairs, sir," she said, speaking with a boldness that surprised
+herself--but who could long remain in fear of the failing old man
+whose leaden eyes met hers with scarce a gleam of meaning? "The
+Countess is frightened here, sir," she continued. "If you would guard
+us upstairs----"
+
+"Have done!" he struck at her with feeble passion, and waved her off.
+"Let me alone."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Peace, girl, I say!" he repeated irascibly. "Who are you to fix
+comings and goings? Get to your stool and your needle. God knows," in
+a burst of childish petulance, "what the world is coming to--when
+children order their elders! But since--there, begone! Begone!"
+
+She wrung her hands in despair. Outside, fuel was beginning to fail,
+the fire was burning low, the court growing dark. Within, the two
+guttering candles showed only the Vicomte's figure sunk low in his
+chair, and here and there a pale face projected from the shadow. But
+the noise of riot and disorder did not slacken, rather it grew more
+menacing; and what was she to do? Desperate, she returned to the
+attack.
+
+"Sir," she said, "there is no one to escort the Countess of
+Rochechouart to her room. She wishes to retire, and it is late."
+
+He got abruptly to his feet, and looked about him with something of
+his ordinary air. "Where is the Countess?" he asked peevishly. And
+then addressing Solomon, "Take candles! Take candles!" he continued.
+"And you, sirrah, light the way! Don't you know your duty? The
+Countess to her room! Mordieu, girl, we are fallen low indeed if we
+don't know how to behave to our guests. Madame--or, to be sure,
+Mademoiselle la Comtesse," with a puzzled look at the shrinking child,
+"let me have the honour. Things are out of gear to-night, and we must
+do the best we can. But to-morrow--to-morrow all shall be in order."
+
+He marshalled Solomon out and followed, bowing the young Countess
+before him. Bonne overjoyed went next; Fulbert, like a patient dog,
+brought up the rear. All was not done yet, however, as Bonne knew; and
+she nerved herself for the effort. On the landing her father would
+have stopped, but she passed him lightly and opened the door that led
+by way of the roof, to the Tower Chamber. "This way!" she muttered to
+Solomon, as he hesitated. "The Countess is timid to-night, sir," she
+continued aloud, "and craves leave to lie in the Tower as the room is
+empty."
+
+He frowned. "Still this silliness!" he exclaimed, and then passing his
+hand over his brow, "There was something said about it, I remember.
+But I thought I----"
+
+"Gave permission, sir? Yes!" Bonne murmured, pushing the girl steadily
+forward. "Solomon, do you hear? Light along the leads!"
+
+Great as was his fear of the Vicomte, the old porter succumbed to her
+will, and all were on the point of following, when a door on the
+landing opened, and the Abbess appeared on the threshold of her room.
+She held a light above her head, and with a sneer on her handsome
+face, contemplated the group.
+
+"What is this?" she asked. And then, gathering their intention from
+their looks--possibly she had had some inkling of it, "You do not mean
+to tell me," she continued, partly in temper, and partly in feigned
+surprise, "that a half-dozen of roystering troopers, sir, are driving
+the Vicomte de Villeneuve from his own chamber? To take refuge among
+the owls and bats? For shame, sir, for shame!"
+
+Bonne tried to stay her by a gesture.
+
+In vain. "A fine tale they will have to tell to-morrow!" the elder
+sister continued in tones of savage raillery. "M. de Villeneuve afraid
+of a handful of rascals, whom their master keeps within bounds with a
+stick! The Lord of Villeneuve bearded in his own house by a scum of
+riders!"
+
+"Peace, daughter!" the Vicomte cried; he even raised his hand in
+anger. "You lie! It is not I"--his head trembling--"I indeed, but the
+Countess! You don't see her. The Countess of Rochechouart----"
+
+"Oh!" said the Abbess. And, the light she held shining on her arrogant
+beauty, she swept a great curtsy, as if she had not seen her intended
+guest before; as if her scornful eyes had not from the first descried
+the girl; as if the small beginnings of hate, hate that scarcely knew
+itself, were not already in her breast. "Oh," she said again, "it is
+the Countess of Rochechouart, is it, who is afraid?"
+
+"And with reason," Bonne answered, intervening hurriedly, but in a low
+voice. "The men are drinking and growing violent. Roger went to them
+some time ago, and has not come back."
+
+"Roger!" the Abbess ejaculated, shrugging her shoulders. "Did you
+think that he could do anything?"
+
+But she who of all those present seemed least likely to interfere
+spoke up at that. Whether the young Countess resented--Heaven knows
+why she should--the sneer at Roger's expense, or only the contempt of
+herself which the Abbess's manner expressed, she plucked up a spirit.
+After all she was not only a Rochechouart, but she was a woman; and
+there is in all women, even the meekest, a spark of temper that, being
+fanned by one of their own sex, blazes up. "It is true," she replied
+coldly, her face faintly pink. "It is I who am afraid, mademoiselle.
+But it is not of the men downstairs. It is their master whom I fear."
+
+"You fear M. de Vlaye?" the Abbess repeated. And she laughed aloud, a
+little over merrily, at the absurdity of the notion. "You--fear M. de
+Vlaye? Why? If I may venture to ask?"
+
+"Why?" the Countess replied. She had learned somewhat during the day,
+and was too young to hide her knowledge, being provoked. "Do you ask
+why, mademoiselle? Because, to be plain, I fear that which it may be
+you do not fear."
+
+The Abbess flushed crimson to her very throat. "And what, to be plain,
+do you mean by that?" she retorted in a tone that shook with passion.
+"If you think that this story is true that they tell----"
+
+"That M. de Vlaye waylaid and would have seized me?" the little
+Countess retorted undismayed. "It is quite true."
+
+"You say that!" The young Abbess was pale and red by turns. "How do
+you know? What do you know?"
+
+"I know the Captain of Vlaye," the girl answered firmly. "I have seen
+him more than once at Angoulême, His mask fell yesterday, and I could
+not be mistaken. It was he!"
+
+The Abbess bit her lip until the blood came in the vain attempt to
+mask feelings which her temper rendered her impotent to control. She
+no longer doubted the story. She saw that it was true; and jealousy,
+rage, and amazement--amazement at Vlaye's treachery, amazement
+at the discovery of a rival in one so insignificant in all save
+rank--deprived her of the power of speech. Fortunately at this moment
+the clash of steel reached Solomon's ears, and, startled, the porter
+gave the alarm.
+
+"My lord, they are fighting!" he cried. And then emboldened by the
+emergency, "Were it not well," he continued, "to put the ladies in a
+place of safety?"
+
+The Vicomte, urged up the steps by the women, leant over the parapet,
+and learned the truth for himself. Bonne, the Countess, the Abbess and
+her women, all followed, and in a twinkling were standing on the roof
+in the dark night, the round tower rising beside them, and the
+croaking of the frogs coming up to them from below.
+
+But the brief clash of weapons was over, and they could make out no
+more than a group of figures gathered about two prostrate men. The
+movement of the lights, now here now there, augmented the difficulty
+of seeing, and for a while Bonne's heart stood still. She made no
+lamentations, for she came of the old blood, but she thought Roger
+dead. And then a man raised a light, and she distinguished his figure
+leaning over one of the injured men.
+
+"Thank God!" she murmured. "There is Roger. He is not hurt!"
+
+"Who are they? Who are they?" the Vicomte babbled, clinging to the
+parapet. "Eh? Who are they? Cannot any one see?"
+
+But no one could see, and the Abbess's women began to cry. She paid no
+heed to them. She leant with the others over the parapet, and she
+listened with them to the shuffling feet of the men below, as slowly
+in a double line they bore the cloaked form towards the house. But
+whether their thoughts were her thoughts, their anxiety her anxiety,
+whether she was wrapt, as they were, in the scene that passed below,
+or chewed instead the cud of other and more bitter reflections, was
+known only to herself. Her proud spirit, whose worst failings hitherto
+had not gone beyond selfishness and vanity, hung, it may be, during
+those moments between good and evil, the better and the worse; took,
+perhaps, the turn that must decide its life; flung from it, perhaps,
+in passionate abandonment the last heart-strings that bound it to the
+purer and more generous affections.
+
+Perhaps; but none of those who stood beside her had an inkling of her
+mood. For the troopers had passed with their mysterious burden into
+the house, and no sooner were they gone than one of the Abbess's women
+cried in a panic that they would be murdered, and in a trice all,
+succumbing to the impulse, made for the Tower Chamber, and herded into
+it pell-mell, some shrugging their shoulders and showing that they
+gave way to the more timid, and the men not knowing from whom to take
+orders. In the chamber were already two or three of the house-women,
+who had sought that refuge earlier in the evening, and these, seeing
+the Vicomte, looked for nothing but slaughter, and by their shrill
+lamentations added to the confusion.
+
+The security of all depended entirely on their holding the way across
+the leads, and here the men should have remained; but the women would
+not part with them and all entered together. Some one locked the outer
+door, and there they were, in all eleven or twelve persons, in the
+great, dreary chamber, where a few feeble candles that served to make
+darkness visible disclosed their blanched faces. At the slightest
+sound the women shrieked or clung to one another, and with every
+second the boldest expected to hear the tramp of feet without, and the
+clatter of weapons on the oak.
+
+There was something ridiculous in this noisy panic; yet something
+terrifying also to those who, like Bonne, kept their heads. She strove
+in vain to make herself heard; her voice was drowned; the disorder
+overwhelmed her as a flood overwhelms a strong swimmer. She seized a
+girl by the arm to silence her: the wench took it for a fresh alarm
+and squalled the louder. She flew to her father and begged him to
+interpose; flurried, he fell into a rage with her, and stormed at her
+as if it were she who caused the confusion. For the others the young
+Countess, though quiet, was scared; and Odette, seated at a distance,
+noticed her companions only at intervals in the dark current of her
+thoughts--and then with a look of disdain.
+
+At length Bonne betook herself to Solomon. "Some one should hold the
+roof!" she said.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Ay, ay, mademoiselle," he said, "but we
+have no orders and the door is locked, and he has the key."
+
+"You could do something there?"
+
+"Ay, if we had orders."
+
+She flew to the Vicomte at that. "Some one should be holding the roof,
+sir," she said. "Solomon and Fulbert could maintain it awhile. Could
+you not give them orders?"
+
+He swore at her. "We are mad to be here," he exclaimed, veering about
+on an instant. "This comes of letting women have a voice! Silence, you
+hell-babes!" he continued, turning with his staff raised upon two of
+the women, who had chosen that moment to raise a new outcry. "We are
+all mad! Mad, I say!"
+
+"I will silence them, sir," she answered. And stepping on a bed,
+"Listen! Listen to me!" she cried stoutly. "We are in little danger
+here if we are quiet. Therefore let us make no noise. They will not
+then know where to find us. And let the men go to the door, and the
+maids to the other end of the room. And----"
+
+Shrieks stopped her. The two whom the Vicomte had upbraided flung
+themselves screaming on Solomon. "The window! The window!" they cried,
+glaring over their shoulders. And before the astonished old man could
+free himself, or the Vicomte give vent to his passion, "The window!
+They are coming in!" they shrieked.
+
+The words were the signal for a wild rush towards the door. Two or
+three of the candles were knocked down, the Vicomte was well-nigh
+carried off his legs, the Abbess, who tried to rise, was pinned where
+she was by her women; who flung themselves on their knees before her
+and hid their faces in her robe. Only Bonne, interrupted in the midst
+of her appeal, retained both her presence of mind and her freedom of
+action. After obeying the generous instinct which bade her thrust the
+young Countess behind her, she remained motionless, staring intently
+at the window--staring in a mixture of hope and fear.
+
+The hope was justified. They were the faces of friends that showed in
+the dark opening of the window. They were friends who entered--Charles
+first, that the alarm might be the sooner quelled, des Ageaux second;
+if first and second they could be called, when the feet of the two
+touched the floor almost at the same instant. But Charles wore a new
+and radiant face, and des Ageaux a look of command, that to Bonne
+after what she had gone through was as wine to a fainting man. There
+were some whom that look did not reach, but even these--women with
+their faces hidden--stilled their cries, and raised their heads
+when he spoke. For a trumpet could not have rung more firm in that
+panic-laden air.
+
+"We are friends!" he said. "And we are in time! M. le Vicomte, we must
+act and ask your leave afterwards." Turning again to the window he
+spoke to the night.
+
+Not in vain. At the word troopers came tumbling in man after man; the
+foremost, a lean, lank-visaged veteran, who looked neither to right
+nor left, but in three strides, and with one salute in the Vicomte's
+direction, put himself at the door and on guard. He had a long,
+odd-looking sword with a steel basket hilt, with which he signed to
+the men to stand here or there.
+
+For they continued to come in, until the Vicomte, stunned by the sight
+of his son, awoke to fresh wonder; and, speechless, counted a round
+dozen and three to boot, besides his guest and Charles. Moreover they
+were men of a certain stamp, quiet but grim, who, being bidden, did
+and asked no questions.
+
+When they had all filed through the group of staring women now fallen
+silent, and had ranged themselves beside the Bat--for he it was--at
+the door, des Ageaux spoke.
+
+"Do you hear them?"
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+"Unlock softly, then, but do not open! And wait the word! M. le
+Vicomte"--he turned courteously to the old man--"the occasion presses,
+or I would ask your pardon. Mademoiselle"--but as he turned to Bonne
+he lowered his voice, and what he said escaped other ears. Not her
+ears, for from brow to neck, though he had but praised her courage and
+firmness, she blushed vividly.
+
+"I did only what I could," she replied, lifting her eyes once to his
+and as quickly dropping them. "Roger----"
+
+"Ha! What of Roger?"
+
+She told him as concisely as she could.
+
+He knit his brows. "That was not of my contrivance," he said. And
+then with a gleam of humour in his eyes, "Masked was he? Another
+knight-errant, it seems, and less fortunate than the first! You do not
+lack supporters in your misfortunes, mademoiselle. But--what is it?"
+
+"They come, my lord," the Bat answered, raising his hand to gain
+attention.
+
+All, at the word, listened with quickened pulses, and in the silence
+the harsh rending of wood came to the ear, a little dulled by
+distance. Then a murmur of voices, then another crash! The men about
+the door poised themselves, each with a foot advanced, and his weapon
+ready; their strained muscles and gleaming eyes told of their
+excitement. A moment and they would be let loose! A moment--and then,
+too late, Bonne saw Charles beside the Bat.
+
+Too late; but it mattered nothing. She might have spoken, but he,
+panting for the fight, exulting in the occasion, would not have heeded
+if an angel had spoken. And before she could find words, the thing was
+done. The Bat flung the door open, and with a roar of defiance the mob
+of men charged out and across the roof, Charles among the foremost.
+
+A shot, a scream, a tumult of cries, the jarring of steel on steel,
+and the fight rolled down through the house in a whirl of strident
+voices. The candles, long-wicked and guttering, flamed wildly in the
+wind; the room was half in shadow, half in light. The Vicomte, who had
+seen all in a maze of stupefaction, stiffened himself--as the old
+war-horse that scents the battle. Bonne hid her face and prayed.
+
+Not so the Abbess. She sat unmoved, a sneer on her face, a dark
+look in her eyes. And so Bonne, glancing up, saw her; and a strange
+pang shot through the younger girl's breast. If he had praised her
+courage--and that with a look and in a tone that had brought the blood
+to her cheeks--what would he think of her handsome sister? How could
+he fail to admire her, not for her beauty only, but for her stately
+pride, for the composure that not even this could alter, for the
+challenge that shone in her haughty eyes?
+
+The next moment Bonne reproached herself for entertaining such a
+thought, while Charles's life and perhaps Roger's hung in the balance,
+and the cries of men in direst straits still rung in her ears. What a
+worm she was, what a crawling thing! God pardon her! God protect them!
+
+The Abbess's voice--she had risen at last and moved--cut short her
+supplications. "Who is he?" Odette de Villeneuve muttered in a fierce
+whisper. "Who is he, girl?" She pointed to des Ageaux, who kept his
+station on the threshold, his ear following the course of the fight.
+"Who is that man? They call him my lord! Who is he?"
+
+"I do not know," Bonne said.
+
+"You do not know?"
+
+"No."
+
+The candles flared higher. The Lieutenant turned and saw the two
+sisters standing together looking at him.
+
+He crossed the room to them, halting midway to listen, his attention
+divided between them and the conflict below. His eyes dwelt awhile on
+the Abbess, but settled, as he drew nearer, on Bonne. He desired to
+reassure her. "Have no fear, mademoiselle," he said quietly. "Your
+brother runs little risk. They were taken by surprise. By this time it
+is over."
+
+The Vicomte heard and his lips trembled, but no words came. It was the
+Abbess who spoke for him. "And what next?" she asked harshly.
+
+Des Ageaux, still lending an ear to the sounds below, looked at her
+with attention, but did not answer.
+
+"What next?" she repeated. "You have entered forcibly. By what right?"
+
+"The right, mademoiselle," he replied, "that every man has to resist a
+wrong. The right that every man has to protect women, and to save his
+friends. If you desire more than this," he continued, with a change of
+tone that answered the challenge of her eyes, "in the King's name,
+mademoiselle, and my own!"
+
+"And you are?"
+
+"His Majesty's Lieutenant in Périgord," he answered, bowing. His
+attention was fixed on her, yet he was vividly conscious of the colour
+that mounted suddenly to Bonne's cheeks, dyed her brows, shone in her
+eyes.
+
+"Of Périgord?" the Abbess repeated in astonishment.
+
+"Of Périgord," he replied, bowing again. "It is true," he continued,
+shrugging his shoulders, "that I am a league or two beyond my border,
+but great wrongs beget little ones, mademoiselle."
+
+She hated him. As he stood there successful, she hated him. But she
+had not found an answer, nor had Bonne stilled the fluttering, half
+painful, half pleasant, of her heart, when the tread of returning feet
+heralded news. The Bat and two others entered, bearing a lanthorn that
+lit up their damp swarthy faces. The first was Roger.
+
+He was wildly excited. "Great news!" he cried, waving his hand. "Great
+news! I have downstairs----"
+
+One look from des Ageaux's eyes silenced him. Des Ageaux looked from
+him to the Bat. "What have you done?" he asked curtly.
+
+"Taken two unwounded, three wounded," the tall man answered as
+briefly. "The others escaped."
+
+"Their horses?"
+
+"We have their horses."
+
+Des Ageaux paused an instant. Then, "You have closed the gates?"
+
+"And set a guard, my lord!" the Bat answered. "We have no wounded,
+but----"
+
+"The Duke of Joyeuse lies below, and is wounded!" Roger cried in a
+breath. He could restrain himself no longer.
+
+If his object was to shatter des Ageaux's indifference, he succeeded
+to a marvel. "The Duke of Joyeuse?" the Lieutenant exclaimed in
+stupefaction. "Impossible!"
+
+"But no!" Roger retorted. "He is lying below--wounded. It is not
+impossible!"
+
+"But he was not--of those?" des Ageaux returned, indicating by a
+gesture the men whom they had just expelled. For an instant the notion
+that he had attacked and routed friends instead of foes darkened his
+face.
+
+"No!" Roger explained fluently--excitement had rid him of his
+diffidence. "No! He was the man who rode into the courtyard--but you
+have not heard? They were going to maltreat him, and he killed their
+leader, Ampoule--that was before you came!" Roger's eyes shone; it was
+evident that he had transferred his allegiance.
+
+Des Ageaux's look sought the Bat and asked a question. "There is a
+dead man below," the Bat answered. "He had it through the throat."
+
+"And the Duke of Joyeuse?"
+
+"He is there--alone apparently."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+The Bat's eyes sought the wall and gazed on it stonily. "There are
+more fools than one in the world," he said gruffly.
+
+Des Ageaux pondered an instant. Then, "I will see him," he said. "But
+first," he turned courteously to the Vicomte, "I have to provide for
+your safety, M. le Vicomte, and that of your family. I can only ensure
+it, I fear, by removing you from here. I have not sufficient force to
+hold the château, and short of that I see no way of protecting you
+from the Captain of Vlaye's resentment."
+
+The Vicomte, who had aged years in the last few days, as the old
+sometimes do, sat down weakly on a bed. "Go--from here?" he muttered,
+his hands moving nervously on his knees. "From my house?"
+
+"It is necessary."
+
+"Why?" A younger and stronger voice flung the question at des Ageaux.
+The Abbess stood forward beside her father. "Why?" she repeated
+imperiously. "Why should we go from here--from our own house? Or why
+should we fear M. de Vlaye?"
+
+"To the latter question--because he does not lightly forgive,
+mademoiselle," des Ageaux replied drily. "To the former because I have
+neither men nor means to defend this house. To both, because you have
+with you"--he pointed to the Countess--"this lady, whom it is not
+consonant with the Vicomte's honour either to abandon or to surrender.
+To be plain, M. de Vlaye's plans have been thwarted and his men
+routed, and to-morrow's sun will not be an hour high before he takes
+the road. To remain here were to abide the utmost of his power;
+which," he added drily, "is at present of importance, however it may
+stand in a week's time."
+
+She looked at him darkly beautiful, temper and high disdain in her
+face. And as she looked there began to take shape in her mind the wish
+to destroy him; a wish that even as she looked, in a space of time too
+short to be measured by our clumsy methods, became a fixed thought.
+Why had he intervened? Who had invited him to intervene? With a
+woman's inconsistency she left out of sight the wrong M. de Vlaye
+would have done her, she forgot the child-Countess, she overlooked all
+except that this man was the enemy of the man she loved. She felt that
+but for him all would have been well! But for him--for even that she
+laid at his door--and his hostility the Captain of Vlaye had never
+been driven to think of that other way of securing his fortunes.
+
+These thoughts passed through her mind in a pause so short that the
+listeners scarcely marked it for a pause. Then, "And if we will not
+go?" she cried.
+
+"All in the house will go," he replied.
+
+"Whither?"
+
+"I shall decide that," he answered coldly. And he turned from her.
+Before she could retort he was giving orders, and men were coming and
+going and calling to one another, and lights were flitting in all
+directions through the house, and all about her was hubbub and stir
+and confusion. She saw that resistance was vain. Her father was
+passive, her brothers were des Ageaux's most eager ministrants. The
+servants were awed into silence, or, like old Solomon, who for once
+was mute on the glories of the race, were anxious to escape for their
+own sakes.
+
+Then into her hatred of him entered a little of that leaven of fear
+which makes hatred active. For amid the confusion he was cool. His
+voice was firm, his eye commanded on this side, his hand beckoned on
+that, men ran for him. She knew the dread in which M. de Vlaye was
+held. But this she saw was not the awe in which men hold him whose
+caprice it may be to punish, but the awe in which men stand of him who
+is just; whose nature it is out of chaos to create order, and who to
+that end will spend himself and all. A man cold of face and something
+passionless; even hard, we have seen, when a rope, a bough, and a
+villain forced themselves on his attention.
+
+She would not have known him had she seen him leaning over Joyeuse a
+few minutes later, while his lean subaltern held a shaded taper on the
+other side of the makeshift pallet. The door was locked on them, they
+had the room to themselves, and between them the Duke lay in the dead
+sleep of exhaustion. "I do not think that we can move him," des Ageaux
+muttered, his brow clouded by care.
+
+The Bat, with the light touch of one who had handled many a dying man,
+felt the Duke's pulse, without rousing him. "He will bear it," he
+said, "in a litter."
+
+"Over that road? Think what a road it is!"
+
+"Needs must!"
+
+"He brought the money, found me gone, and followed," des Ageaux
+murmured in a voice softening by feeling. "You think we dare take
+him?"
+
+"To leave him to the Captain of Vlaye were worse."
+
+"Worse for us," des Ageaux muttered doubtfully. "That is true."
+
+"Worse for all," the Bat grunted. He took liberties in private that
+for all the world he would not have had suspected.
+
+Still his master, who had been so firm above-stairs, hung undecided
+over the sick man's couch. "M. de Vlaye would not be so foolish as to
+harm him," he said.
+
+"He would only pluck him!" the Bat retorted. "And wing us with the
+first feather, the Lady Countess with the second, the Crocans with the
+third, and the King with the fourth." He stopped. It was a long speech
+for him.
+
+Des Ageaux assented. "Yes, he is the master-card," he said slowly. "I
+suppose we must take him. But Heavens knows how we shall get him
+there."
+
+"Leave that to me!" said the Bat, undertaking more than he knew. Nor
+did he guess with whose assistance he was to perform the task.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                       THE CHAPEL BY THE FORD.
+
+
+It was after midnight, and the young moon had set when they came, a
+long procession of riders, to the ford in which des Ageaux had laved
+his horse's legs on the evening of his arrival. But the night was
+starlight, and behind them the bonfire, which the men had rekindled
+that its blaze might aid their preparations, was reflected in a faint
+glow above the trees. As they splashed through the shallows the frogs
+fell silent, scared by the invasion, but an owl that was mousing on
+the slope of the downs between them and the dim lifted horizon
+continued its melancholy hooting. The women shivered as the cool air
+embraced them, and one here and there, as her horse, deceived by the
+waving weeds, set a foot wrong, shrieked low.
+
+But no one hesitated, for the Bat had put fear into them.
+
+He had told them in the fewest possible words that in ninety minutes
+M. de Vlaye would be knocking at the gate they left! And how long the
+pursuit would tarry after that he left to their imaginations. The
+result justified his course; the ford, that in daylight was a terror
+to the timid, was passed without demur. One by one their horses
+stepped from its dark smooth-sliding water, turned right-handed, and
+falling into line set their heads up-stream towards the broken hills
+and obscure winding valleys whence the river flowed.
+
+Hampered by the wounded man's litter and the night, they could not
+hope to make more than a league in the hour, and with the first
+morning light might expect to be overtaken. But des Ageaux considered
+that the Captain of Vlaye, ignorant of his force, would not dare to
+follow at speed. And in the beginning all went well.
+
+Over smooth turf, they made for half a league good progress, the long
+bulk of the chalk hill accompanying them on the left, while on the
+right the vague gloom of the wooded valley, teeming with mysterious
+rustlings and shrill night cries, drew many a woman's eyes over her
+shoulder. But, as the bearers of the litter could only proceed at a
+walking pace, the long line of shadowy riders had not progressed far
+before a gap appeared in its ranks and insensibly grew wider.
+Presently the two bodies were moving a hundred yards apart, and
+henceforward the rugged surface of the road, which was such as to
+hamper the litter without delaying the riders, quickly augmented the
+interval.
+
+The Vicomte was mounted on his own grizzled pony, and with his two
+daughters and Roger rode at the head of the first party. They had not
+proceeded far before Bonne remarked that her sister was missing. She
+was sure that the Abbess had been at her side when she crossed the
+ford, and for a short time afterwards. Why had she left them? And
+where was she?
+
+Not in front, for only the Bat and Charles, who had attached himself
+to the veteran, and was drinking in gruff tales of leaguer at his
+lips, were in front. Behind, then?
+
+Bonne turned her head and strove to learn. But the light of the stars
+and the night--June nights are at no hour quite dark--allowed her to
+see only the persons who rode immediately behind her. They were Roger
+and the Countess. On their heels came two more--men for certain. The
+rest were shadows, bobbing vaguely along, dim one moment, lost the
+next.
+
+Presently Charles, also, missed the Abbess, and asked where she was.
+
+Roger could only answer: "To the rear somewhere."
+
+"Learn where she is," Charles returned. "Pass the word back, lad. Ask
+who is with her."
+
+Presently, "She is not with us," Roger passed back word. "She is with
+the litter, they say. And it has fallen behind. But the Lieutenant is
+with it, so that she is safe there."
+
+"She were better here," Charles answered shortly. "She is not wanted
+there, I'll be sworn!"
+
+Wanted or not, the Abbess had not put herself where she was without
+design. Her passage of arms with des Ageaux had not tended to soften
+her feelings. She was now bent on his punishment. The end she knew;
+the means were to seek. But with the confidence of a woman who knew
+herself beautiful, she doubted not that she would find or create them.
+Bitterly, bitterly should he rue the day when he had forced her to
+take part against the man she loved. And if she could involve in his
+fall this child, this puling girl on whom the Captain of Vlaye had
+stooped an eye, not in love or adoration, but solely to escape the
+toils in which they were seeking to destroy him--so much the better!
+The two were linked inseparably in her mind. The guilt was theirs, the
+cunning was theirs, the bait was theirs; and M. de Vlaye's the
+misfortune only. So women reason when they love.
+
+If she could effect the ruin of these two, and at the same time save
+the man she adored, her triumph would be complete. If--but, alas, in
+that word lay the difficulty; nor as she rode with a dark face of
+offence had she a notion how to set about her task. But women's wits
+are better than their logic. Men spoke in her hearing of the litter
+and of the delay it caused, and in a flash the Abbess saw the means
+she lacked, and the man she must win. In the litter lay the one and
+the other.
+
+For the motives that led des Ageaux to bear it with him at the cost of
+trouble, of delay, of danger, were no secret to a quick mind. The man
+who lay in it was the key to the situation. She came near to divining
+the very phrase--a master-card--which des Ageaux had used to the Bat
+in the security of the locked room. A master-card he was; a card that
+at all costs must be kept in the Lieutenant's hands, and out of
+Vlaye's power.
+
+Therefore, even in this midnight flight they must burden themselves
+with his litter. A Duke, a Marshal of France, in favour at Court, and
+lord of a fourth of Languedoc, he had but to say the word, and Vlaye
+was saved--for this time at any rate. The Duke need but give some
+orders, speak to some in power, call on some of those to whom his will
+was law, and his _protégé_ would not fall for lack of means. Up to
+this point indeed, after a fashion which the Abbess did not
+understand--for the man had fallen from the clouds--he was ranged
+against her friend. But if he could be put into Vlaye's hands, or
+fairly or foully led to take Vlaye's side, then the Captain of Vlaye
+would be saved. And if she could effect this, would be saved by her.
+By her!
+
+The sweetness of such a revenge only a woman can understand. Her lover
+had fancied the Rochechouart's influence necessary to his safety,
+and to gain that influence he had been ready to repudiate his love.
+What a sweet savour of triumph if she--she whom he was ready to
+abandon--could save him by this greater influence, and in the act show
+him that a mightier than he was at her feet!
+
+She had heard stories of the Duke's character, which promised well for
+her schemes. At the time of her short sojourn at Court, he had but
+lately left his cloister, drawn forth by the tragical death of his
+brother. He was then entering upon that career of extravagance,
+eccentricity, and vice which, along with his reputation for eloquence
+and for strange fits of repentance, astonished even the dissolute
+circles of the Court. His name and his fame were in all mouths; a man
+quick to love, quick to hate, report had it; a man in whom remorse
+followed sharp on sin, and sin on remorse. A man easy to win, she
+supposed, if a woman were beautiful and knew how to go about it.
+
+Ay, if she knew; but there was the difficulty. For he was no common
+man, no man of narrow experience, and the ordinary bait of beauty
+might not by itself avail. The Abbess, high as her opinion of her
+charm stood, perceived this. She recognised that in the circle; in
+which he had moved of late beauty was plentiful, and she bent her wits
+to the point. After that she might have been riding in daylight, for
+all she saw of her surroundings. She passed through the ford and in
+her deep thinking saw it not. The long, dark hill on her left, and the
+low woods on her right with their strange night noises, and their
+teeming evidences of that tragedy of death which fills the world, did
+not exist for her. The gleam of the star-lit river caught her eye, but
+failed to reach her brain. And if she fell back slowly and gradually
+until she found herself but a few paces before the litter and its
+convoy, it was not by design only, but in obedience to a subtle
+attraction at work within her.
+
+When her women presently roused her by their complaints that she was
+being left behind with the litter, she took it for an omen, and smiled
+in the darkness. They, on the contrary, were frightened, nor without
+reason. The road they pursued followed the bank of the river; but the
+wide vale had been left behind. They had passed into a valley more
+strait and gloomy; a winding trough, close pressed by long, hog-shaped
+hills, between which the travellers became every moment more deeply
+engaged. The stars were fading from the sky, the darkness which comes
+before the dawn was on them, and with the darkness a chill.
+
+This change alarmed the women. But it did not terrify them one half as
+much as the marked anxiety of the litter-party. More than once des
+Ageaux' voice could be heard adjuring the bearers to move faster. More
+than once a rider passed between them and the main body, and on each
+of these occasions men fell back and took the places of the old
+carriers. But still the cry was "Faster! Faster!"
+
+In truth the day was on the point of breaking, and the fugitives were
+still little more than two leagues from Villeneuve. At any moment they
+might be overtaken, when the danger of an attack would be great, since
+the light must reveal the paucity of their numbers. In this pinch even
+the Lieutenant's stoicism failed him, and moment by moment he trembled
+lest the sound of galloping horses reach his ear. Less than an hour's
+riding at speed would place his charges in safety; yet for the sake of
+a wounded man he must risk all. No wonder that he cried again,
+"Faster, men, faster!" and pressed the porters to their utmost speed.
+
+Soon out of the darkness ahead loomed the Bat. "This will never do, my
+lord," he said, reining in his horse beside his leader. He spoke in a
+low voice, but the Abbess, a dozen paces ahead, could hear his words,
+and even the heavy breathing of the carriers. "To go on at this pace
+is to hazard all."
+
+"You must go forward with the main body!" des Ageaux replied shortly.
+"Let the women who are with us ride on and join the others, and do
+you--but, no, that will not do."
+
+"For certain it will not do!" the Bat answered. "It is I must stay,
+for the fault is mine. But for me you would have left him, my lord."
+
+"Do you think we could support him on a horse?"
+
+"It would kill him!" the Bat rejoined. "But it is not two hundred
+paces to the chapel by the ford that you remarked this morning. If we
+leave him there, and M. de Vlaye finds him, he will be as anxious to
+keep life in him as we are. If, on the other hand, M. de Vlaye
+overlooks him, we can bring him in to-morrow."
+
+"If it must be," des Ageaux answered reluctantly, "we must leave him.
+But we cannot leave him without some assistance. Who will stay with
+him?"
+
+"_Diable!_" the Bat muttered.
+
+"I will not leave him without some one," des Ageaux repeated firmly.
+"Some one must stay."
+
+Out of the darkness came the answer. "I," the Abbess said, "will stay
+with him!"
+
+"You, mademoiselle?" in a tone of astonishment.
+
+"I," she repeated, "and my women. I," she continued haughtily, "have
+nothing to fear from the Captain of Vlaye or his men."
+
+"And mademoiselle's robe," the Bat muttered with the faintest
+suspicion of irony in his tone, "protects her."
+
+Charles, who had joined them with the Bat, thoughtlessly assented. "To
+be sure!" he cried. "Let my sister stay! She can stay without danger."
+
+Alone of the three des Ageaux remained silent--pondering. He had seen
+enough of the Abbess to suspect that it was not humanity alone which
+dictated her offer. Probably she desired to rejoin her admirer. In
+that case, did she know enough of the fugitives' plans and strength to
+render her defection formidable?
+
+He thought not. At any rate it seemed well to take the chance. He was
+taking, he was beginning to see that he was taking a good many
+chances. "It seems a good plan, if mademoiselle be indeed willing," he
+said. He wished that he could see her face.
+
+"I have said," she replied coldly, "that I am willing."
+
+But her women showed forthwith that they were not. What? Remain in
+this wilderness in the dark with a dying man? They would be eaten by
+wolves, they would be strangled by witches, they would be ravished by
+thieves! Never! And in a trice one was in hysterics, deaf to her
+mistress's threats and to the Bat's grim hints. The other, after a
+conflict, allowed herself to be browbeaten, and sullenly, and with
+tears, yielded. But not until the water of the ford rippled about
+their horses' hoofs, and the tiny spark of light that through the open
+door beaconed the shallows shone in their eyes.
+
+Had it been day they would have had before them a scene at once wild
+and peaceful. On their right, below the ford--which was formed by
+the passage of the stream from one side of the narrow valley to the
+other--a lofty bluff overhung a black pool. Above the ford, on the
+level meadow, and a stone's-throw from the track--if track that could
+be called which was not used by a hundred persons in a year--stood a
+tiny chapel and cell, which some hermit in past ages had built with
+his own hands. The approach of the Crocans had driven his latest
+successor from his post; but des Ageaux, passing that way in the day,
+had noted the chapel, and with the forethought of the soldier who
+expected to return in the dark he had seen the earthen lamp relit. Its
+light, he knew, would, in case of need, direct him to the ford.
+
+At present that lamp, a tiny spark in the blackness, was all they saw.
+They made for it through the shallows and over a bed of shingle across
+which the horses clattered noisily. In haste they reached the door of
+the chapel, and there in a trice--for if the thing was to be done it
+must be done quickly--they aided the Abbess and the lay sister to
+alight, bore in the litter with the wounded man, and closed the door
+on all; this last, that the light might no longer be visible from the
+ford. Then they, the men, got themselves to horse again, and away at a
+round trot.
+
+Not without repugnance on the part of several; not without regret and
+misgiving. Des Ageaux's heart smote him as his horse's feet carried
+him farther and farther away; it seemed so cowardly a thing to leave
+women to bear in that wild and lonely place the brunt of whatever
+might befall. And Charles, ready as he had been to acclaim the notion,
+wondered if he had erred in leaving his sister thus lightly. But in
+truth they were embarked in an enterprise whose full perils it lay
+with time to disclose. And other and more pressing anxieties soon had
+possession of their minds.
+
+They had been less troubled had they been able to witness the Abbess's
+demeanour in her solitude. While her companion, overcome by her fears,
+sank down in a fit of hysterical weeping, Odette de Villeneuve
+remained standing within the low doorway, and with head erect listened
+frowning until the last sound of the horses' hoofs died to the ear.
+Then she drew a deep breath, and, turning slowly, she allowed her eyes
+to take stock of the place in which she so strangely found herself.
+
+It was a tiny building of rough-hewn stones, with an altar and
+crucifix, also of stone, erected at the end remote from the door.
+Along either wall ran a stone bench, on one or other of which the good
+fathers must have spent many a summer day watching the ford; for at a
+certain point the stone was polished and worn by friction. The litter
+and the wounded man filled half the open space, leaving visible only a
+floor of trodden earth foul with the droppings of birds and sheep, and
+betraying in other respects the results of neglect. Here and there on
+some stone larger than its fellows, and particularly on the lintel, a
+prentice hand had carved symbols; but, this notwithstanding, the whole
+wore by the light of the smoky lamp an aspect far from sacred.
+
+Yet the prospect of spending several hours in so poor a place did not
+appear to depress the Abbess. Her inspection finished, she nodded an
+answer to her thoughts, and sitting down on the bench beside the
+litter, rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, and
+fixing her large dark eyes on the wounded man, gave herself up, as
+completely as if she had been in her own chamber, to her thoughts.
+
+Her woman, whose complaining, half fractious, half fearful, had sunk
+to an occasional sob, presently looked at her, and fascinated by that
+gloomy absorption--which might have dealt with the mysteries of the
+faith, but turned in fact on the faithlessness of man--she could not
+look away. And moments passed; the first pale glimmer of dawn
+appeared, and still the two women faced one another across the
+insensible man whose heavy breathing, broken from time to time by some
+obstruction, was the one sound that vied with the low murmur of the
+stream.
+
+Suddenly the Abbess lifted her head. Mingled with the water's chatter
+was a harsher sound--a sound of rattling stones, of jingling steel
+and, a second later, of men's voices. She rose slowly to her feet, and
+as the other woman, alarmed by the expression of her features, would
+have screamed, she silenced her by a fierce gesture. Then she stood,
+her hand resting against the wall beside her, and listened.
+
+She had no doubt that it was he. Her parted lips her eyes, half
+fierce, half tender, told as much. It was he, and she had but to open
+the door, she had but to show herself in the lighted doorway, and he
+would come to her! As the voices of the riders grew, and the rattle of
+hoofs among the pebbles ceased, she pictured him abreast of the
+hermitage; she fancied, but it must have been fancy, that she could
+distinguish his voice. Or no, he would not be speaking. He would be
+riding, silent, alone, his hand on his hip, the grey light of morning
+falling on his stern face. And at that, at that picture of him, his
+deeds and his career, his greatness who had made himself, his firmness
+whom no obstacle stayed, rose before her embodied in the solitary
+figure riding foremost through the dawn. Her breast rose and fell
+tumultuously. The hand that rested on the wall shook. She had only to
+open the door, she had only to cry his name aloud, only to show
+herself, and he would be at her side! And she would be no longer
+against him but with him, no longer would be ranked with his foes--who
+were so many--but for him against the world!
+
+The temptation was so strong that her form seemed to droop and sway as
+if a physical charm drew her in the direction of the man she loved,
+the man to whom, in spite of his faults, or by reason of them, she
+clung in the face of defection. But powerful as was the spell laid
+upon her, pride--pride and her will proved stronger. She stiffened
+herself; for an instant she did not seem to breathe. Nor was it until
+the last faint clink of iron died away that she turned feverish eyes
+in search of some crevice, some loophole, some fissure, through which
+she might yet see him; yet see, if it were but the waving of his
+plume.
+
+She found none. The only windows, two tiny arrow-slits that had never
+known glass, were in the wall remote from the track. On that she set
+her teeth to control the moan of disappointment that rose from her
+heart; and slowly she sank into her old seat.
+
+But not into her old reverie. The eyes which she bent on the sick man
+were no longer dreamy. On the contrary, they were fixed in a gaze of
+eager scrutiny that sought to drag from the Duke's pallid features the
+secret of his weakness and waywardness, of his strange nature and
+bizarre fame. And unconsciously as she gazed, she bent nearer and
+nearer to him; her look grew sharper and more imperious. All hung on
+him now--all! Her mind was made up. Fortune had not cast him so timely
+in her path, fate had not afforded her the opportunity of which she
+had dreamed, without intending her to profit by it, without proposing
+to crown the scheme with success. The spell of her lover's presence,
+the spell that had obsessed her so short a time before that the
+interval could be reckoned by seconds, was broken! Never should it be
+hers to play that creeping part, to regain him that way, to return to
+him tamely, empty-handed, a suppliant for his love! No, not while it
+might be hers to return a conqueror, an equal, with a greater than the
+Captain of Vlaye in her toils!
+
+She rose to her feet, and tasting triumph in advance, she smiled. With
+a firm hand, disregarding her woman's remonstrance, she extinguished
+the lamp. The pale light of early morning stole in through the narrow
+slits, and then for a brief instant the Abbess held her breath; for
+the light falling on the Duke's face so sharpened his thin temples and
+nervous features, showed him so livid and wan and death-like, that she
+thought him gone. He was not gone, but she acted upon the hint. If he
+died, where were her schemes and the clever combinations she had been
+forming? Quickly she drew from the litter a flagon of broth that had
+been mixed with a cunning cordial; and first moistening his lips with
+the liquor, by-and-by she contrived to make him swallow some. In the
+act he opened his eyes, and they were clear and sensible; but it was
+only to close them again with a sigh, half of satisfaction, half of
+weakness. Nevertheless, from this time his state was rather one of
+sleep, the sleep craved by exhausted nature, than of insensibility or
+fever, and with every hour the forces of his youth and constitution
+wrought at the task of restoration.
+
+Odette, brooding over him, watched with satisfaction the return of a
+more healthy colour to his cheeks. Time passed, and presently, while
+the light was still cold and young, there came an interruption. A
+murmur of voices, and the jingle of spur and bit, warned her that M.
+de Vlaye, baffled in his attempt to cut off the fugitives before they
+found refuge, was returning through the valley. This time, how
+different were her sensations. She started to her feet and listened,
+and her face grew hard, but under pressure of suspense, not of desire.
+Suspense--for if they turned aside, if they entered the deserted
+chapel and discovered her, her plan--and her very soul was now set on
+its success--perished still-born.
+
+It was a trying moment, but it passed. Probably Vlaye knew the chapel
+of old, and knew that the good father had fled from it. At any rate he
+passed by it, and rode on his way. She heard the trampling of the
+horses break the singing of the ford; and then she heard only the
+murmur of the water and the morning hymn of a lark that, startled by
+the passage of the riders, soared above the glen, and with the
+sunshine on its throbbing breast, hailed the warm rising of another
+day.
+
+Whether the lark's song appealed to the softer strain in her, or
+she began to hate the sordid interior with its grey half-light, the
+moment she was sure that the riders had gone on their way she opened
+the door and went out. The sun was peeping into the valley and all
+nature was astir. The laughing waters of the ford, the steep bluff,
+darksome by night, now clad in waving tree-tops, the floor of meadow
+emerald-green, all reflected the brightness of a sky in which not one
+but half a dozen songsters trilled forth the joy of life. After the
+gloom, the vigil, the danger of the night, the scene appealed to her
+strongly; and for a brief time, while she stood gazing on the vale
+unmarred by human works or human presence, she felt a compunction;
+such a feeling as in a similar scene invades the breast of the veteran
+hunter, and whispers to him that to carry death into the haunts of
+nature is but a sorry task.
+
+A feeling as quickly suppressed in the one case as in the other. A few
+minutes later the Abbess appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to the
+woman to join her outside.
+
+"Give me your hood and veil," she said in a tone that forestalled
+demur. "And I need your outer robe! Don't stare, woman!" she continued
+fiercely. "Is there any one to see you? Can the hills hurt you? Obey.
+It is my pleasure to wear the dress of the order, and I have it not
+with me!"
+
+"But, madam----"
+
+"Obey, woman, and take my cloak!" the Abbess retorted. "Wrap yourself
+in that!" And when the change was made, and she had assumed over her
+dress the loose black and white robe of the order, "Now wait for me
+here," she said. "And if he call, as is possible, do not go to him,
+but fetch me!"
+
+She departed towards the pool below the ford, and, disappearing behind
+a clump of low willows, made, using the still water for a mirror, some
+further changes in her toilet.
+
+Not fruitlessly, for when she returned to the door of the chapel, the
+woman who awaited her stared, thinking that she had never seen her
+mistress show fairer in her silks than in this black and white, which
+she so seldom favoured. And soon there was another who thought--if not
+that thought, a similar one. The Duke, opening on the glory of
+sunshine and summer warmth, the eyes that had so nearly closed for
+good, saw at the foot of his litter a wondrous figure kneeling before
+the altar.
+
+The face of the figure was turned from him, and for a time, between
+sleeping and waking, he considered her idly, supposing her now an
+angel interceding for him in the other life on which he had entered,
+now a nun praying beside his bier; for he took it for certain he was
+dead. By-and-by he passed over to the theory of the angel, for the
+figure moved, and the sunlight passing in through a tiny window-slit
+formed a nimbus about her head. And then again, moving afresh, as in
+an ecstacy of devotion, she lifted her eyes to the crucifix, and the
+hood falling back with the movement revealed a profile of a beauty and
+purity almost unearthly.
+
+The Duke sighed. He had sighed before, but apparently, for the sigh
+had not changed her rapt expression, she had not heard. Now she did
+hear. She rose, and with a deep genuflection turned from the altar,
+and glided with downcast eyes to his side. Eyes softened to the
+meekness of a dove's looked into his, and found that he was awake.
+Then, angel or saint, or whatever she was, she made a sign to him not
+to speak; and producing, by magic as it seemed, ambrosial food, she
+fed him, and with a finger on his lip bade him in gentle accents,
+"Sleep!"
+
+Sleep? To think he could sleep when an angel--and while he laughed in
+ridicule of the notion he slept, that heavenly face framed in its
+nun's hood, that drooping form with the hands crossed upon the breast
+moving before him into the land of visions. He was back again in those
+earliest days of his cloistered existence, when to live in an
+atmosphere, pure and apart, innocent of the passions and desires of
+the world, had been his dream. He had learned--only too soon--that
+that atmosphere and that innocence were not to be maintained, though
+the walls of a monastery be ten feet through. For the nature which the
+thought of such a life had charmed was of all natures the one most
+open to worldly fascinations. He had fallen; and he had presently
+replaced the vision of being good by the enthusiasm of doing good. He
+had lifted his voice, and the preaching of Père Ange had moved half
+Paris to a twenty-four hours' repentance. His own had lasted a little
+longer.
+
+Now, weak and unnerved, he reverted at sight of this beautiful nun's
+face to his old visions of a saintly life; and in innocent adoration
+he dreamt of naught but her countenance. When he awoke again and found
+her still at her devotions, though the sun was high, still at his
+service when she found him waking, still moving dovelike and silent
+about her ministrations--he watched her everywhere. Several times he
+wished to speak, but she laid a finger on her lips, and covering her
+hands with her sleeves, sat on the bench beside him, reading her book
+of hours. And so during the hazy period of his return to consciousness
+he saw her. Awake or drowsing, stung to life by the smart of his hurt
+or lulled to sleep by the music of the stream, he had her face always
+before him.
+
+At length there came a time, a little before high noon, when he awoke
+with a clearer eye and a mind capable of feeling surprise at his
+position. He saw her sitting beside him, but he saw also the rough
+grey walls, the altar, the crucifix; and to wonder succeeded
+curiosity. What had happened, and how came he there? His eyes sought
+her face and remained riveted to it.
+
+"Where am I?" he whispered.
+
+She marked that his eyes were clear and his strength greater, and,
+"You are in the chapel in the upper valley of the Dronne," she
+answered.
+
+"But I----" He stopped and closed his eyes, brought up by some
+confusion in his thoughts. At last, "I fancied I fought with some
+one," he whispered. "It was in a courtyard--at night? And there were
+lights? It was one of Vlaye's men, and the place was----" He broke off
+in the painful effort to remember. His lips moved without sound.
+
+"Villeneuve," she said.
+
+"Villeneuve," he whispered gratefully. "But this is not Villeneuve?"
+
+"We are two leagues from Villeneuve."
+
+"How come I here?"
+
+She told him, preserving the gentle placidity which, not without
+thought, she had adopted for her _rôle_. The repulse of Vlaye's men
+and the Lieutenant's decision to quit the château, that and the night
+retreat up to the arrival of the party at the ford--all were told.
+Then she broke off.
+
+"But des Ageaux?" he murmured. "Where is he?" And again, that he might
+look round him, he tried to rise. "Where are they all?" he continued
+in wonder. "They have not left me?" with a querulous note in his
+voice.
+
+"They are not here," she answered. And gently she induced him to lie
+back again. "Be still, I pray," she said. "Be still. You do yourself
+no good by moving."
+
+He sighed. "Where are they?" he persisted.
+
+"We were hard pressed at the ford," she answered with feigned
+reluctance. "And your litter delayed them. It was necessary to leave
+you or all had been lost."
+
+He lay in silence awhile with closed eyes, considering what she had
+told him. At last, "And you stayed?" he murmured in so low a voice
+that the words were barely audible. "You stayed!"
+
+"It was necessary," she answered.
+
+"And you have been beside me all night?"
+
+She bowed her head.
+
+His eyes filled with tears, and his lips trembled, for he was very
+weak. He groped for her hand, and would have carried it to his lips,
+but as men kiss relics or the hands of saints--if she had not withheld
+it from him. Settling the thin coverings more comfortably round him,
+she gave him to drink again, softly chiding him and bidding him be
+silent--be silent and sleep.
+
+But, "You have been beside me all night!" he repeated. "All night,
+alone here, and a woman! A woman!"
+
+She did not tell him that she was not alone; that her woman was even
+then sitting outside, under strict orders not to show herself. For now
+she was assured that she was in the right path. She had had
+opportunities of studying his countenance while he slept, and she had
+traced in it those qualities of enthusiasm and weakness, of the
+libertine and the ascetic, which his career so remarkably displayed.
+The beauty which in ordinary circumstances his jaded eye, versed in
+woman's wiles, might neglect, would appeal with irresistible force in
+a garb of saintliness. Nay, more; as he recovered his strength and
+returned to his common feelings, it would prove, she felt sure, more
+provocative than the most worldly lures. Her resolve to carry the
+matter through was now fixed and immutable: and with her eye on the
+goal, she neglected no precaution that occurred to her mind.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                         THE PEASANTS' CAMP.
+
+
+Something after high noon des Ageaux appeared and, whatever the
+Abbess's feelings, he was overjoyed to find the three undisturbed. He
+despatched a flying party down the valley that he might have notice if
+the enemy approached, and then he bent himself to remove the Duke in
+safety to his camp. In this the Abbess had her own line to take, and
+took it with decision. She represented the patient as worse than he
+was, described the fever as still lingering upon him, and using the
+authority which her devotion of the night gave her, she insisted that
+the Duke should see no one. A kind of shelter from the sun was woven
+of boughs, and placed over the litter. He was then lifted and borne
+out with care, the Abbess walking on one side, and her woman on the
+other. In the open air des Ageaux would have approached and spoken to
+him, for between gratitude and remorse the Lieutenant was much
+touched. But the authority of the sick-nurse was great then as it is
+now. The Abbess repelled him firmly, and, refusing the horse which had
+been brought for her, she persisted in walking the whole distance to
+the camp--a full league--by the side of the litter. In this way she
+fenced others off, and the Duke had her always before him. Always the
+opening at the side of the litter framed her face.
+
+She gave her mind so completely to him that she took no note of their
+route, save that they kept the valley, which preserving its flat
+bottom now ran between hills of a wilder aspect. It was only when the
+troopers, at a word from the Lieutenant, closed in about the litter,
+that she observed--though it had been some time in sight--the object
+which caused the movement. This was a small hill-town, girt by a
+ruinous wall, and buckled with crazy towers, which topped an acclivity
+on the right of the valley, and commanded the road. The suspicion with
+which her escort regarded the place did not surprise her when she
+remarked the filthy forms and wild and savage faces which swarmed upon
+the wall. There were women and children as well as men in the place,
+and all, ragged and half naked, mopped and mowed at the passers, or,
+leaping to their feet, defied them with unspeakable words and
+gestures.
+
+The Abbess looked at them with daunted eyes. There was something
+inhuman in their squalor and wildness. "Who are they?" she asked.
+
+"Crocans," the nearest rider answered.
+
+"But we are not going to them?" she returned in astonishment. She had
+heard that they were bound for the peasants' camp, and her lip had
+curled at the information. But if these were Crocans--horror!
+
+The man spat on the ground. "That is one band, and ours is another,"
+he replied. "All canaille, but--not all like that, or we had some
+strange bed-fellows indeed!"
+
+He would have said more, but he caught the Lieutenant's eye, and was
+silent and five minutes later the Abbess saw a strange sight. The
+riders before her wheeled to the left, and, bending low in their
+saddles, vanished bodily in the rock that walled the road on that
+side.
+
+A moment later she probed the mystery. In the rock wall which fenced
+the track on the left, as the river fenced it on the right, was an
+arched opening, resembling the mouth of a cave--of one of those caves
+so common in the Limousin. Within was no cave, however, but a spacious
+circus of smooth green turf open to the heaven, though walled on every
+side by grassy slopes which ran steeply to a height of a hundred feet.
+There was no entrance to the basin, but neither its defensible
+strength, nor the wisdom of the Crocans in choosing it, was apparent
+until the green rampart cast about it by nature was examined and found
+to be so scarped on the outer side as to form here a sheer precipice,
+there a descent trying to the most active foot.
+
+A spring near the inner margin of this natural amphitheatre fed a
+rivulet which, after passing across it, and dividing it into two
+unequal parts, escaped to the river through the rocky gateway.
+
+The smaller portion of the sward thus divided, a portion raised very
+slightly above the rest, had something of the aspect of a stage on a
+great scale. About its middle a flat-topped rock rising to a man's
+height from the ground had the air of an altar, and this was shaded by
+the only tree in the enclosure, a single plane-tree of vast size,
+which darkened with its ancient smooth-barked limbs a half-acre of
+ground. Probably this rock and this tree had witnessed the meetings of
+some primitive people, had borne part in their human sacrifices, and
+echoed the cries with which they acclaimed the moment of the summer
+solstice.
+
+To-day this basin, long abandoned to the solitude of the hills,
+presented once more a scene of turmoil, such as for strangeness might
+rival the gatherings of that remote age. Nor, save for a circumstance
+presently to be named, could even the Abbess's sullen curiosity have
+withheld a meed of admiration as the panorama unfolded itself before
+her.
+
+Round the edge of the larger half of the amphitheatre ran a long
+line--in parts double and treble, of booths open at the front, and
+formed, some of branches of trees, some of plaited rushes or osier.
+Under these, swarms of men, women, and children lounged in every
+posture, while others strolled about the ground before the sheds,
+which, crowded with sheep, oxen and horses, wore the aspect of a
+rustic fair. The turf that had been so fair a fortnight before was
+trodden bare in places, and in others poached and stained by the
+crowds that moved on it. Only the immediate bank of the rivulet had
+been kept clear.
+
+The smaller portion of the sward had been given up to des Ageaux and
+his band of troopers and refugees. A dozen horses tethered in an
+orderly row at the rear of the plane-tree, with a pile of gear at the
+head of each, spoke of military order, as did the three or four booths
+which had been erected for the accommodation of the Vicomte's party.
+But as in such a place and under such circumstances it was impossible
+to enforce strict discipline, the curious among the peasants, and not
+men only, but women and children, roved in small parties on this side
+also, staring and questioning; some with furtive eyes as expecting a
+trap and treachery, others watching in clownish amazement the
+evolutions of a picked band of three score peasants whom the Bat was
+beginning to instruct in the use of their weapons and in the simplest
+movements of the field. Here and there on the steep slopes about the
+saucer were groups of peasants; and on the top of the ridge, which was
+forbidden to the crowd, were five sentinels, stationed beside as many
+cairns of stones piled for the purpose at fixed distances from one
+another. These were of the Lieutenant's institution, for though the
+safety of the camp hung wholly on the command of its natural
+battlement, which captured would convert the basin into a death-trap,
+the Crocans had kept no regular guard on it. He on his arrival had
+entrusted its oversight to the two young Villeneuves, and one or the
+other was ever patrolling the length of the vallum, or from the
+highest point searching the chaos of uninhabited hills and glens that
+stretched on every side.
+
+This hasty sketch of the scene leaves to be fancied those worst traits
+of the camp, of its wildness and savagery, that could not fail to
+disquiet the mind even of a bold woman. Many of the peasants were half
+naked, others were clad in cow-skins, in motley armour, in sordid,
+blood-stained finery. All went unshaven, and many had long, filthy
+elf-locks hanging about their faces, and ragged beards reaching to
+their girdles. Some had squalid bandages on head or limb, and all were
+armed grotesquely with bill-hooks or scythes, or with stakes pointed
+and hardened in the fire, or with knotty clubs. M. de Vlaye and his
+kind would have seen in them only a horde to be exterminated without
+pity or remorse. Nor could their looks have failed to startle the
+Abbess, high as was her natural courage--if a thing had not at the
+very entrance engaged her attention.
+
+For there, under the archway, a group of six men sat on their hams,
+their backs against the rock. And these were so foul in garb, and
+repulsive in aspect, that the common peasants of the camp seemed by
+comparison civilised. The Abbess shuddered at the mere look of them,
+and would have averted her eyes if they had not, as des Ageaux
+entered, risen and barred the way. The foremost, a tall, meagre figure
+with a long white beard, and the gleam of madness in his eyes, seized
+the Lieutenant's bridle and raising his other hand seemed to forbid
+his entrance. "Give us," he cried in a strange patois, "our man! Our
+man!"
+
+The Abbess expected des Ageaux to strike him from his path, or bid his
+men ride him down. But the Lieutenant considered with patience the
+strange figure clad much as John the Baptist is portrayed in pictures,
+and when he answered he spoke calmly. "You are from the town on the
+hill?" he said.
+
+"Ay, and we claim our man!"
+
+"The man, you mean, whom we took from your hands last night?"
+
+"Ay, that man!"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"That we may burn him," the savage answered, his face lit up by a
+gleam of frightful cruelty. "That we may do to him as he has done to
+us and our little ones. That we may burn him as he and his have burned
+us, from father to son, father to son, by the light of our own thatch.
+They have smoked us in our holes," he continued with ferocity, "as
+they smoke foxes; and we will smoke him. He has done to us that! And
+that!" He turned, and at a sign two of his five fellows stepped
+forward and held aloft the maimed and ghastly stumps of their arms.
+"And that! And that!" Again two stepped forward and pointed to their
+eyeless sockets. "And what he has done to us we will do to him!"
+
+The Abbess turned sick at the sight. But des Ageaux answered with
+quietness. "Yet what has he done to you, old man," he asked, "that you
+stand foremost?"
+
+"He has blinded me there!" the madman answered, and with a strangely
+dramatic gesture pointed to his brow. "I am dark at times, and boys
+mock me! But to-day I am whole and well!"
+
+"I will not give him up to you!" the Lieutenant replied with calm
+decision. "But if he has done the things of which you tell me, I will
+judge him myself and punish him. Nay"--staying them sternly as they
+began to cry out upon him, "listen to me now! I have listened to you.
+For all who come in to me, and cease from pillage, and burning, and
+murder. I give my warrant that the past shall be overlooked. They
+shall be free to go back to their villages, or if they dare not go
+back they shall be settled elsewhere, with pardon for life and limb.
+But for those who do not come in, the burden of all will fall upon
+them! The law will pass upon them without mercy, and their gibbets
+will be on every road!"
+
+"Not so!" the other cried, raising himself to his full height and
+flinging his lean arms to heaven. "Not so, lord, for the time is full!
+Hear me, too, man of blood. We know you. You speak softly because the
+time is full, and you would fain cast in your lot with us and escape.
+But you are of those who ride in blood, and who trust in the strength
+of your armour, and who eat of the fat and drink of the strong, while
+the poor man perishes under the feet of your horses, while the earth
+groans under the load of your wickedness, and God is mocked. But the
+time is full, and there comes an end of your gyves and your gibbets,
+your wheels and your molten lead! The fire is kindled that shall burn
+you. Is there one of you for ten of us? Can your horses bear you
+through the sea when the fire fills all the land? Nay, three months
+have we burned all ways, and no man has been able to withstand our
+fire! For it grows! It grows!"
+
+The fierce murmurings of the madman's fellows almost drowned des
+Ageaux' voice when he went to answer. "Your blood be on your own
+heads!" he said solemnly. "I have spoken you fairly, I have given you
+the choice of good and of evil."
+
+"Nought but evil," the other cried, "can proceed out of your mouth!
+Now give us our man!"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Then will we burn you for him," the madman shrieked, in sudden
+frenzy, "when you fall into our hands. You and these--women with
+breasts of flint and hearts of the rock-core, who bathe in the blood
+of our infants, and make a holiday of our torments! Beware, for when
+next we meet, you die!"
+
+"Be it so!" des Ageaux replied, sternly restraining his men, who would
+have fallen on the hideous group. "But begone!"
+
+They turned away, mopping and mowing--one was a leper--and lifting
+hands of imprecation. And the Abbess, while the litter was being
+lifted, was left for a moment with des Ageaux. She hated him, but she
+did not understand him; and it was the desire to understand him that
+led her to speak.
+
+"Why did you not seize the wretches," she asked, "and punish them?"
+
+"Their turn will come," he replied coldly. "I would have saved them if
+I could."
+
+"Saved them?" she exclaimed. "Why?"
+
+"Who knows what they have suffered to bring them to this?"
+
+She laughed in scorn of his weakness--who fancied himself a match for
+the Captain of Vlaye! His cold words, his even manner, had somewhat
+deceived her. But now she saw that he was a fool, a fool. She saw that
+if she detached Joyeuse there was nothing in this man M. de Vlaye need
+fear.
+
+She left him then. She had had no sleep the previous night, and loth
+as she was to lose sight of the Duke or to give another the chance of
+supplanting her, she knew that she must rest. So weary was she after
+she had eaten that the rough couch in the hut set apart for her--her
+women after the mode of the day slept across the door or where they
+could--might have been a chamber in the heart of some guarded palace
+instead of a nook sheltered from curious eyes only by a wall of
+boughs. She had that healthiness which makes nerves and even
+conscience superfluous, and could not anywhere have slept better or
+been less aware of the wild life about her. The slow tramp of armed
+men, the voices of the watch upon the earth-wall, that to waking ears
+told of danger and suspicion--these were no more to her in her fatigue
+than the silent march of the summer stars across the sky.
+
+When she awoke on the following morning, refreshed and full of energy,
+the sun was an hour high, and the peasants' camp was astir. In one
+place the Bat was drilling his three score men as if he had never
+ceased; in another food was being apportioned, and forage assigned.
+Neither des Ageaux nor her brothers were visible, but hard by her door
+the Vicomte, attended by Bonne and Solomon, sat with a hand on either
+knee, and gazed piteously on the abnormal scene.
+
+The uppermost feeling in the old man's mind was a querulous wonder;
+first that he had allowed himself to be dragged from his house,
+secondly that, even since Coutras, things were suffered to come to
+this pass. How things had come to this, why his life and home had been
+broken up, why he had had no voice in the matter, and why his sons,
+even crooked-back Roger, went, and came, and ordered, without so much
+as a _by your leave_ or an _if you please_--these were points that by
+turns puzzled and enraged him, and in the consideration of which he
+found no comfort so great as that which Solomon assiduously
+administered.
+
+"Ah!" the old servant remarked more than once, as he surveyed with a
+jaundiced eye the crowded camp beyond the rivulet, "they are full of
+themselves! But I mind the day--it was when you entertained the
+Governors, my lord--when they'd have looked a few beside the servants
+we had to supper in the courtyard! A few they'd look. I'd sixty-two
+men, all men of their hands, and not naked gipsies like these, to my
+own table!"
+
+Which was true; but Solomon forgot to add that it was the only table.
+
+"Ay!" the Vicomte said, pleased, though he knew that Solomon was
+lying. "Times are changed."
+
+"Since Coutras--devil take them!" Solomon rejoined, wagging his beard.
+"There were men then. 'Twas a word and a blow, and if we didn't run
+fast enough it was to the bilboes with us, and we smarted. Your
+lordship remembers. But now, Heaven help us," he continued with
+growing despondency as his eye alighted on des Ageaux, who had just
+appeared in the distance, "the men might be women! Might be women, and
+mealy-mouthed at that!"
+
+The Vicomte laughed an elderly cackling laugh. "You didn't think, man,
+that the Villeneuves would come to this?" he said.
+
+"Never! And would no wise ha' believed it!"
+
+"Who were once masters of all from Barbesieux to Vlaye!"
+
+"And many a mile further!" Solomon cried, leaping on the proffered
+hobby. "There were the twenty manors of Passirac"--he began to count
+on his hands. "And the farms of Perneuil, more than I have fingers and
+toes. And the twenty manors of Corde, and the great mill there--the
+five wind-mills of Passirac I don't think worth mentioning, though
+they would make many a younger son a portion. Then the Abbey lands of
+Vlaye, and the great mill there that took in toll as much as would
+keep a vicomte of these times, saving your lordship's presence. And
+then at Brenan----"
+
+Bonne, listening idly, heard so much. Then the Abbess, who, unnoticed,
+had joined the group, touched her elbow, and muttered in her ear: "Do
+you see?"
+
+"What?" Bonne asked innocently.
+
+The Abbess raised her hand. "Why he has dragged us all here," she
+said.
+
+Bonne followed the direction of her sister's hand, and slowly the
+colour mounted to her cheeks. But, "Why?" she asked, "I don't
+understand."
+
+"You don't understand," Odette answered, "don't you? It is plain
+enough--for the blind." And she pointed again to the Lieutenant, who
+was standing at same distance from the group in close talk with the
+Countess. "The Lieutenant of Périgord is a great man while the King
+pleases, and when the King no longer pleases is an adventurer like
+another! A broken officer living at ordinaries," with a sneer, "at
+other men's charges. Such another as the creature they call the Bat!
+No better and no worse! But the Lieutenant of Périgord with the lands
+and lordships of Rochechouart were another and a different person. And
+none sees that more clearly than the Lieutenant of Périgord. He has
+made his opportunity, and he is not going to waste it. He has brought
+her here, and not for nothing."
+
+Bonne had an easy retort. "At least he is not the first to see his
+interest there!" lay ready to her tongue. But she did not utter it.
+She was silent. Her colour fluttered, as the tender, weakling hope
+that she had been harbouring, for a few hours, died within her. Of
+course she should have known it! The prize that had attracted the
+Captain of Vlaye, the charm that had ousted her handsome sister from
+his heart--was it likely that M. des Ageaux would be proof against
+these--proof against them when she herself had no prior claim nor such
+counter-claims as beauty and brilliance? When she was but plain,
+homely, and country-bred, as her father often told her? She had been
+foolish; foolish in harbouring the unmaidenly hope, the forward
+thought; foolish now in feeling so sharp and numbing a pain.
+
+But perhaps most foolish in her inability to await his coming. For he
+and the little Countess were approaching the group, at a slow pace;
+the girl talking with an animation that showed she had quite forgotten
+her shyness. Bonne marked the manner, the smile, the confiding upward
+look, the lifted hand; and she muttered something, and escaped before
+the two came within earshot.
+
+She wanted to be alone, quite alone, to have this out with herself;
+and she made for a tiny cup in the hillside, hidden from the camp by
+the thick branches of the plane-tree. She had discovered it the day
+before, but when she gained it now, there in the hollow sat Roger,
+looking down on the scene below.
+
+He nodded as if he were not in the best of tempers; which was strange,
+for he had been in high spirits an hour before. She sat down beside
+him, having no choice, but some minutes elapsed before he opened his
+mouth. Then, "Lord," he exclaimed, with something between a groan and
+a laugh, "what a fool a man can be!"
+
+She did not answer; perhaps for the word "man" she was substituting
+the word "woman." He moved irritably in his seat. "Hang it!" he
+exclaimed. "Say something, Bonne! Of course it seems funny to you that
+because she thanked me prettily the day I tried to cover her retreat
+to the house and--and because she talked to me the night before last
+as we rode--as if she liked it, I mean--I should forget who she is!"
+
+"Who she is," Bonne repeated quietly, thinking of some one else who
+had forgotten.
+
+"And who I am!" he answered. "As if the Vicomte had not ground it into
+me enough! If I were Charles, she would still be--who she is, and meat
+for my master. But as I am what I am," he laughed ruefully, "would you
+have thought I could be such a fool, Bonne?"
+
+"Poor Roger," she said gently.
+
+"She clung to me that day, when I ran with her. But, dash it"--rubbing
+his head--"I must not think of it. I suppose she would have clung to
+old Solomon just the same!"
+
+"I am afraid so!" Bonne said, smiling faintly. It was certain that she
+had not clung to any one. Yet there were analogies.
+
+"I suppose you--you saw them just now?"
+
+"Yes, I saw them."
+
+"She never talked to me like that! Why should she--a thing like me."
+Poor Roger! "I knew the moment I cast eyes on them. You did, too, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+Perhaps Roger had hoped in his heart for a different reply, for he
+stared gloomily at the swarming huts visible above the tree. And
+finally, "There is Charles," he said, "walking the ridge--against the
+sky-line there! Why cannot I be like him, as happy as a king, with my
+head full of battles and sieges, and the Bat more to me than any woman
+in the world! Why cannot I? With such a pair of shoulders as I have--"
+
+"Dear lad!"
+
+"I should be in his shoes and he in mine! Lord, what a fool!" with
+gloomy unction. "What a fool! I must needs think of _her_ when a
+peasant girl would not look at me. I must needs think of the Countess
+of Rochechouart! Oh, Lord, as if I had anything to give her! Or aught
+I could do for her!"
+
+Bonne did not reply on the instant, But presently, "There is something
+you can do for her," she ventured. "It is not much, but----"
+
+"What?" he said. "I know nothing."
+
+"You can help him."
+
+"I?"
+
+"The mouse helped the lion. You can help him and be at his side, and
+guard him in danger--for her sake. Just as," Bonne continued, her
+voice sinking a little, "if you were a girl, and--and felt for him as
+you feel for her, you could watch over her and protect her and keep
+her safe--for his sake. Though it would be harder for a woman, because
+women are jealous," Bonne added thoughtfully.
+
+"And men too!" Roger rejoined from the depths of his small experience.
+"All the same I will do it. And I am glad it is he. He won't beat her,
+or shut her up and leave her in some lonely house as Court people do.
+I believe," he continued gloomily, "I'd as soon it was he as any one."
+
+Bonne nodded. "That is agreed then," she said softly, though a moment
+before she had sighed.
+
+"Agreed?" rather grumpily. "Well, if one person can agree, it is!" And
+then, thinking he had spoken thanklessly to the sister who had been
+his friend and consoler in many a dark hour when the shadow of his
+deformity had hidden the sun, he laid his hand on hers and pressed it.
+"Well, agreed it is!" he said more brightly. "They came from their
+outside world to our poor little life, and we must help them back
+again, I suppose. I would not wish them ill, if--if it would make me
+straight again."
+
+"That is a big bribe," she said, smiling. "But neither would I--if it
+would make me as handsome as Odette!"
+
+"No!"
+
+They sat silent then. Far away on their left, where lay the entrance
+to the camp from the river gorge, men were piling stones under the
+archway, so as to leave but a narrow passage. Below them on the right
+the Bat was drilling his pikemen, and alternately launching his lank
+form this way and that in a fever of impatience. On the sky-line men
+were pacing to and fro, searching with keen eyes the misty distance of
+glen and hill; and ever and anon the squeal of a war-horse rang above
+the multitudinous sounds of the camp. On every side, wherever the eye
+rested, it discovered signs of strife and turmoil, harbingers of pain
+and death.
+
+But though the two who looked down on the scene neither knew it nor
+thought of it, with them in their little hollow was a power mightier
+than any, the power that in its highest form does indeed make the
+world go round; the one power in the world that is above fortune,
+above death, above the creeds--or, shall we say, behind them. For with
+them was love in its highest form, the love that gives and does not
+ask, and being denied--loves. In their clear moments men know that
+this love is the only real thing in the world; and a thousand times
+more substantial, more existent, than the objects we grasp and see.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                              HOSTAGES.
+
+
+There is born of the enthusiasm of self-denial a happiness that while
+the fervour lasts seems all-sufficing. The skirmish that has routed
+the van of jealousy stands for the battle; nor does the victor foresee
+that with the fall of night the enemy will flock again to the attack,
+and by many an insidious onset strive to change the fortune of the
+day.
+
+Still once to have felt the generous impulse, once to have trodden
+self underfoot and risen god-like above the baser thoughts, is
+something. And if Bonne and her brother were destined to find the
+victory less complete than they thought, if they were to know moments
+when the worst in them raised its head, they were but as the best of
+us. And again--a reflection somewhat more humorous--had these two been
+able to read the mind of the man of whom each was thinking, they had
+met with so curious an enlightenment that they had hardly been able to
+look at one another. To say that des Ageaux entertained no tender
+feeling for any one were to say more than the truth; for during the
+last few days a weakness had crept unwelcome and unbidden into his
+heart. But he kept it sternly in the background--he who had naught to
+do with such things--and it did not tend in the direction of the
+Countess. In point of fact the Lieutenant had other and more serious
+food for thought; other and more pressing anxieties than love.
+Forty-eight hours had disclosed the weakness of the position in which
+he had chosen to place himself. He foresaw, if not the certainty, the
+probability of defeat. And defeat in the situation he had taken up
+might be attended by hideous consequences.
+
+These were not slow to cast their shadows. The two on the hill had not
+sat long in silent companionship before the sounds which rose from the
+camp began to take a sterner note. Roger was the first to mark the
+change. Rousing himself and shaking off his lugubrious mood, "What is
+that?" the lad asked. "Do you hear, Bonne? It sounds like trouble
+somewhere."
+
+"Trouble?" she repeated, still half in dreams.
+
+"Yes, by Jove, but--listen! And what has become"--he was on his feet
+by this time--"of the Bat's ragged regiment? They have vanished."
+
+"They must be behind the tree," Bonne answered. And moved by the same
+impulse they walked a little aside along the slope until they could
+see the section of the camp immediately below them, which had been
+hidden hitherto by the branches of the great plane-tree.
+
+The little group which Bonne had left when her feelings compelled her
+to flight remained in the same place. But all who formed it, the
+Vicomte and his eldest daughter as well as des Ageaux and the
+Countess, were now on their feet. The Vicomte and the ladies stood
+together in the background, while des Ageaux, who had placed himself
+before them, confronted an excited body of men, some hundred in
+number, and composed in part at least of those whom the Bat had been
+lately drilling. Whether these had broken from his control and
+gathered their fellows as they moved, or the impulse had come from
+outside and they were but recruits, their presence rendered the
+movement more formidable. They were not indeed of so low and savage a
+type as the creatures who had met des Ageaux in the gate the previous
+day, but viewed in this serried mass, their lowering brutish faces and
+clenched hands called up a vivid sense of danger. They must have made
+some outcry as they approached, or Roger had not noticed their
+assemblage. But now they were fallen silent. A grim mass of scowling,
+hard-breathing men, then small suspicious eyes glaring through tangled
+locks irresistibly reminded the observer of that quarry the most
+dangerous of all the beasts of chase, the wild boar.
+
+Bonne's colour faded as her eyes took in the meaning of the scene. She
+grew still paler as her brain pictured for the first time the things
+that might happen in this camp of clowns of whose real sentiments the
+intruders had so little knowledge, at whose possible treachery it was
+so easy to guess. Time has not wiped, time never will wipe from the
+French memory the fear of a Jacquerie. The horrors of that hideous
+revolt, of its rise and its suppression are stamped on the minds of
+the unborn. "What is it?" she repeated more than once, her heart
+fluttering. How very, very near he stood--on whom all depended--to the
+line of scowling men!
+
+"A mutiny, I fear!" Roger answered hastily. "Come!" And, with face
+slightly flushed, he hurried, running and sliding down the slope.
+
+She was not three paces behind him when he reached the foot. Here they
+lost sight of the scene, but quickly passed between two huts and
+reached the Vicomte's side. Des Ageaux was speaking.
+
+"I cannot give you the man," he was saying, "but I can give you
+justice."
+
+"Justice?" the spokesman of the peasants retorted bitterly--he wore
+the dress of a smith, and belonged to that craft. "Who ever heard but
+of one sort of justice for the poor man? Justice, Sir Governor, is the
+poor man's right to be hung! The poor man's right to be scourged! The
+poor man's right to be broken on the wheel! To see his hut burned and
+his wife borne off! That is the justice"--rudely--"the poor man gets--
+be it high or low, king's or lord's!"
+
+"Ay, ay!" the stern chorus rose from a hundred throats behind him,
+"that is the poor man's justice!"
+
+"It is to put an end to such things I am here!" des Ageaux replied,
+marking with a watchful eye the faces before him. He was far from
+easy, but he had handled men of their kind before, and thought that he
+knew them.
+
+"There was never a beginning of such things, and there will never be
+an end!" the smith returned, the hopelessness of a thousand years of
+wrong in his words. "Never! But give us this man--he has done all
+these things, he and his master, and we will believe you."
+
+"I cannot give him to you," des Ageaux answered. The same prisoner,
+one of Vlaye's followers, was in question whom the Old Crocans had
+yesterday required to be given up to them. "But I have told you and I
+tell you again," the Lieutenant continued, reading mischief in the
+men's faces, "that you shall have justice. If this man has wronged you
+and you can prove it----"
+
+"If!" the peasant cried, and baring his right arm he raised his
+clenched fist to heaven.
+
+But the Lieutenant went on as if the man had not spoken. "If you can
+prove these things upon him by witnesses here present----"
+
+"You will give him to us?"
+
+"No, I will not do that!"
+
+"You will give him to us!" the smith repeated, refusing to hear the
+denial. And all along the line of scowling faces--the line that
+wavered ominously at moments of emotion as if it would break about the
+little group--ran a swift gleam of white teeth.
+
+But des Ageaux did not blench. He raised his hand for silence, and his
+voice was steady as a rock as he made answer. "No," he said, "I will
+not give him to you. He belongs neither to me nor to you, but to God
+and the King, whose is justice."
+
+"To God!" the other snarled, "whose is justice! Rather, whose servants
+hold the lamb that the devils may flay it! And for the King, Sir
+Governor, a fig for him! Our own hands are worth a dozen kings!"
+
+"Stay!" The line was swaying; in the nick of time des Ageaux' voice,
+and perhaps something in his eye, stayed it. "Listen to me one
+moment," he continued. "To-morrow morning--for I have not
+time to-day--the man you accuse shall be tried. If he be guilty,
+before noon he shall die. If he be not guilty, he shall go!"
+
+A murmur of protest.
+
+But des Ageaux raised his head higher and spoke more sternly. "He
+shall go!" he repeated--and for the moment he mastered them. "If he be
+innocent he shall go! What more do you claim? To what beyond have you
+a right? And now," he continued, as he saw them pause angry but
+undecided, "for yourselves! I have told you, I tell you again that
+this is your last chance. That I and the offer I make you are your
+last hope! There is a man there"--with his forefinger he singled out a
+tall youth with a long, narrow face and light blue eyes--"who promises
+that when you are attacked he will wave his arm, and Vlaye and his
+riders will fall on their faces as fell the walls of Jericho! Do you
+believe him? Will you trust your wives and children to him? And
+another"--again he singled out a man, a beetle-browed dwarf, hideous
+of aspect, survivor of some ancient race--"who promises victory if you
+will sacrifice your captives on yonder stone! Do you believe him? And
+if you do not trust these, in what do you trust? Can naked men stand
+before mailed horses? Can you take castles with your bare hands? You
+have left your villages, you have slain your oxen, you have burned
+your tools, you have slain your lords' men, you have taken the field.
+Have peasants ever done these things--and not perished sooner or later
+on gibbets and in dungeons? And such will be your fate, and the fate
+of your women and your children, if you will go your way and will not
+listen!"
+
+"What do you promise us?" The question in various forms broke from a
+dozen throats.
+
+"First, justice on the chief of your oppressors."
+
+"The Captain of Vlaye?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Ay, ay!" Their harsh cries marked approval. Some with dark looks spat
+on their hands and worked their right arms to and fro.
+
+"Next," des Ageaux continued, "that which never peasant who took the
+field had yet--pardon for the past. To those who fear not to go back,
+leave to return to their homes. To those who have broken their lords'
+laws a settlement elsewhere with their wives and children. To every
+man of his hands, when he leaves, ten deniers out of the spoils of
+Vlaye to carry him to his home."
+
+Nine out of ten marked their approval by a shout; and des Ageaux
+heaved a sigh of relief, thinking all well. But the smith turned and
+exchanged some words with the men nearest him, chiding them and
+reminding them of something. Then he turned again.
+
+"Fine words! But for all this what pledge, Sir Governor?" he asked
+with a sneer. "What warranty that when we have done our part we shall
+not to gibbet or gallows like our fellows?"
+
+"The King's word!"
+
+"Ay? And hostages? What hostages?"
+
+"Hostages?" The Lieutenant's voice rang sharp with anger.
+
+"Ay, hostages!" the man answered sturdily, informed by the murmurs of
+his fellows that he had got them back into the road from which des
+Ageaux' arguments had led them. "We must have hostages."
+
+Clearly they had made up their minds to this, they had determined on
+it beforehand. For with one voice, "We must have hostages!" they
+thundered.
+
+Des Ageaux paused before he answered--paused in dismay. It looked as
+if--already he feared it--he had put out his hand too far. As if he
+had trusted too implicitly to his management of men, and risked not
+himself only, but women; women of the class to which these human
+beasts set down their wrongs, women on whom the least accident or
+provocation might lead them to wreak their vengeance! If it were so!
+But he dared not follow up the thought, lest the coolness on which all
+depended should leave him. Instead, "We are all your hostages," he
+said.
+
+"And what of those? And those?" the smith answered. With a cunning
+look he pointed to the two knots of troopers whom des Ageaux had
+brought with him. "And by-and-by there will be more. Madame"--he
+pointed to the little Countess who had shrunk to Bonne's side, and
+stood with the elder girl's arm about her--"Madame has sent for
+fifty riders from her lands in the north--on, we know! And the Duke
+who is ill, for another hundred and fifty from Bergerac! When they
+come"--with a leer--"where will be our hostages? No, it is now we must
+talk, Sir Governor, or not at all."
+
+Des Ageaux, his cheek flushed, reflected amid an uneasy silence. He
+knew that two of his riders were away bearing letters, and that four
+more were patrolling the valley; that two with Charles de Villeneuve
+were isolated on the ridge, unable to help; in a word, that no more
+than twelve or thirteen were within call, who, separated from their
+horses, were no match for a mob of men outnumbering them by five or
+six to one, and whom the first blow would recruit from every quarter
+of the seething camp. He had miscalculated, and saw it. He had
+miscalculated, and the consequences he dare not weigh. The men in
+whose power he had placed himself--and so much more than himself--were
+not the dull clods he had deemed them, but alike ferocious and
+suspicious, ready on the first hint of treachery to exact a fearful
+vengeance. No man had ever kept faith with them; why should they
+believe that he would keep faith? He shut his teeth hard. "I will
+consider the matter," he said, "and let you know my answer to-morrow
+at noon." He spoke as ending the conference, and he made as if he
+would turn on his heel.
+
+"Ay, when madame's fifty spears are come?" the smith cried. "That will
+not do! If you mean us well give us hostages. If you mean us ill,"
+taking one step forward with an insolent gesture----
+
+"Fool, I mean you no ill!" the Lieutenant answered sternly. "If I
+meant you ill, why should I be here?"
+
+But "Hostages! Hostages!" the crowd answered, raising weapons and
+fists.
+
+Their cries drowned his words. A score of hands threatened him.
+Without looking, he felt that the Bat and his troopers, a little clump
+apart, were preparing to intervene, and he knew that on his next
+movement all depended. The pale faces behind him he could not see, for
+he was aware that if his eye left his opponents, they would fall upon
+him. At any second a hurried gesture, or the least sign of fear might
+unloose the torrent, and well was it for all that in many a like scene
+his nerve had been tempered to hardness. He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well," he said, "you shall have your hostages."
+
+"Ay, ay!" A sudden relaxation, a falling back into quietude of the
+seething mass approved the consent.
+
+"You shall have my lieutenant," he continued, "and----"
+
+"And I will be the other," cried Roger manfully. He stepped forward.
+"I am the son of M. le Vicomte there! I will be your hostage," he
+repeated.
+
+But the smith, turning to his followers, grinned. "We'd be little the
+better for them," he said. "Eh? No, Sir Governor! We must have our
+choice!"
+
+"Your choice, rogues?"
+
+"Ay, we'll have the pick!" the crowd shouted. "The best of the
+basket!" Amid ferocious laughter.
+
+Des Ageaux had suspected for some hours past that he had done a
+foolish, a fatally foolish thing in trusting these men, whom no man
+had ever trusted. He saw now that only two courses stood open to him.
+He might strike the smith down at his feet, and risk all on the effect
+which the act might have on his followers; or he might yield what they
+asked, allow them to choose their hostages, and trust to time and
+skill for the rest. His instincts were all for the bolder course, but
+he had women behind him, and their chance in a conflict so unequal
+must be desperate. With a quietness and firmness characteristic of the
+man he accepted his defeat.
+
+"Very well," he said. "It matters nothing. Whom will you have?"
+
+"We'll have you," the smith replied grinning, "and her!" With a grimy
+hand he pointed to the little Countess who with Bonne's arm about her
+and Fulbert at her elbow was staring fascinated at the line of savage
+faces.
+
+"You cannot have a lady!" the Lieutenant answered with a chill at his
+heart.
+
+"Ay, but it is she who has the riders who are coming!" the smith
+retorted shrewdly. "It is her we want and it is her we'll have! We'll
+do her no harm, and she may have her own hut on our side, and her
+woman with her, and a man if she pleases. And you may have a hut
+beside hers, if one," with a wink, "won't do for the two."
+
+"But, man," des Ageaux cried, his brow dark, "how can I take Vlaye and
+his castle while I lie a hostage?"
+
+"Oh, you shall go to and fro, to and fro, Sir Governor!" the smith
+answered lightly. "We'll not be too strict if you are there of nights.
+And we will know ourselves safe. And as we live by bread," he
+continued stoutly, "we'll do her no harm if faith be kept with us!"
+
+Des Ageaux endeavoured to hide his emotion, but the sweat stood on his
+brow. Defeat is bitter to all. To the man who has long been successful
+most bitter.
+
+Suddenly, "I will go!" said the Countess bravely. And she stepped
+forward by the Lieutenant's side, a little figure, shrinking, yet
+resolute. "I will go," she repeated, trembling with excitement, yet
+facing the men.
+
+"No!" Roger cried--and then was silent. It was not for him to speak.
+What could he do?
+
+"We will all go!" Bonne said.
+
+"Nay, but that will not do," the smith replied, with a sly grimace.
+"For then they"--he pointed to the little knot of troopers who waited
+with sullen faces a short arrow-shot away--"would be coming as well.
+The lady may bring a woman if she pleases, and her man there, as I
+said." He nodded towards Fulbert. "But no more, or we are no gainers!"
+
+To the Lieutenant that moment was one of the bitterest of his life.
+He, the King's Governor, who had acted as master, who had forced the
+Vicomte and his party to come into his plans, whether they would or
+no, stood out-generalled by a mob of peasants, whom he had thought to
+use as tools! And not only that, but the young Countess, whose safety
+he had made the pretext for the abandonment of the château, must
+surrender herself to a risk more serious--ay, far more serious, than
+that from which he had made this ado to save her!
+
+Humiliation could scarcely go farther. It was to his credit, it was
+perhaps some proof of his capacity for government that, seeing the
+thing inevitable, he refrained from useless words or protest, and
+sternly agreed. He and the Countess would remove to the farther side
+of the camp in the course of the day.
+
+"With a man and a maid only?" the smith persisted, knitting his brows.
+Having got what he had asked he doubted.
+
+"The Countess of Rochechouart will be so attended," the Lieutenant
+answered sternly. "And you, Sir Governor?"
+
+"I am a soldier," he retorted, so curtly that they were abashed. With
+some muttering they began to melt away. Awhile they stood in groups,
+discussing the matter. Then gradually they retired across the rivulet
+to their quarters.
+
+The Lieutenant had been almost happy had that ended it. But he had to
+face those whom he had led into this trap, those whom he had forced to
+trust him, those whom he had carried from their home. He was not long
+in learning their views.
+
+"A soldier!" the Vicomte repeated, taking up his last word in a voice
+shaking with passion. "You call yourself a soldier and you bring us to
+this! To this!" With loathing he described the outline of the camp
+with his staff. "You a soldier, and cast women to these devils! Pah!
+Since Coutras there may be such soldiers! But in my time, no!"
+
+He did not reply: and the Abbess took up the tale. "Excellent!" she
+said, with bitterest irony. "We are all now assured of your prudence
+and sagacity, sir! The safety and freedom which we enjoy here, the
+ease of mind which the Countess will doubtless enjoy tonight----"
+
+"Do not frighten her, mademoiselle!" he said, repressing himself.
+Then, as if an impulse moved him, he turned slowly to Bonne. "Have you
+nothing to add, mademoiselle?" he asked, in a peculiar tone.
+
+"Nothing!" she answered bravely. And then--it needed some courage to
+speak before her father and sister, "Were I in the Countess's place I
+should not fear. I am sure she will be safe with you."
+
+"Safe!" Odette cried, her eyes flashing. In the excitement of the
+moment the plans she had so recently made were forgotten. "Ay, as safe
+as a lamb among wolves! As safe as a nun among robbers! So safe that I
+for one am for leaving this moment. Ay, for leaving, and now!" she
+continued, stamping her foot on the sward "What is it to us if this
+gentleman, who calls himself the Governor of Périgord--and may be
+such, I care not whether he is or not--has a quarrel with M. de Vlaye
+and would fain use us in it as he uses these brute beasts? What, I
+say, is it to us? Or why do we take part? M. le Vicomte"--she turned
+to her father--"if you are still master of Villeneuve, you will order
+our horses and take us thither. We have naught to fear, I say it
+again, we have naught to fear at M. de Vlaye's hands; and if we fall
+into them between this and Villeneuve, so much the better! But if we
+stay here we have all to fear." In truth she was honestly frightened.
+She thought the case desperate.
+
+"Mademoiselle----"
+
+"No, sir!" she retorted, turning from him. "I did not speak to you;
+but to you, M. le Vicomte! Sir, you hear me? Is it not your will that
+we order the horses and go from here?"
+
+"If we can go safely----"
+
+"You cannot go safely!" des Ageaux said, with returning decision.
+"If you have nothing to fear from the Captain of Vlaye, the Countess
+has. Nor is that all. These men"--he pointed in the direction
+of the peasants, who were buzzing about their huts like a swarm of
+bees--"have forced my hand, but through fear and distrust, not in
+malice. They mean us no harm if we mean them none. But the Old
+Crocans, as they call themselves, in the town on the hill--if you fall
+into their hands, M. le Vicomte--and beyond the lines of this camp no
+one is safe from their prowling bands--then indeed God help you!"
+
+"God help us whether or no!" the Vicomte answered in senile anger. "I
+wash my hands of it all, of it all! I am nothing here, and have been
+nothing! Let who will do! The world is mad!"
+
+"Certainly we were mad when we trusted you!" the Abbess cried,
+addressing des Ageaux. "Never so mad! But if I mistake not, here is
+another with good news! Oh!" to the Bat, who, with a shamefaced air,
+was hovering on the skirts of the group, as if he were not sure of his
+reception, "speak, sir, without reserve! We all know"--in a tone of
+mockery--"how fair and safely we stand!"
+
+Des Ageaux turned to his follower. "What is it?" he asked.
+
+"The prisoner is missing, my lord." The Abbess laughed bitterly. The
+others looked at the Bat with faces of dismay. "Missing? The man we
+have promised to hold for them. How?" des Ageaux exclaimed sternly.
+This was a fresh blow and a serious one.
+
+"When I saw, my lord, that we were like to be in trouble here, I drew
+off the two men who were guarding him. He was bound, and--we had too
+few as it was."
+
+"But he cannot have passed the ramparts."
+
+"Anyway we cannot find him," the Bat answered, looking ashamed and
+uncomfortable. "I've searched the huts, and----"
+
+"Is it known?"
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+"Then set the guards as before over the hut in which you had him, and
+see that the matter does not leak out to-night."
+
+"But if," the Bat objected, "they discover that he is gone while you
+are with them to-night, my lord, they are in an ugly mood, and----"
+
+"They must not discover it!" des Ageaux answered firmly. "Go, see to
+it yourself. And let two men whom you can trust continue the search,
+but as if they had lost something of their own."
+
+The Bat went on his errand; and the Abbess, with this fresh weapon in
+her quiver, prepared to resume the debate. But the Lieutenant would
+not have it. "Mademoiselle," he said, with a look which silenced her,
+"if you say more to alarm the Countess, whose courage"--he bowed in
+the direction of the pale frightened girl--"is an example to us all,
+she will not dare to go this evening. And if she does not go, the
+lives of all will be in danger. An end of this, if you please!"
+
+And he turned on his heel, and left them.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                          SAINT AND SINNER.
+
+
+An hour later the Lieutenant was with the Duke in his quarters, and
+had imparted to him what he knew of the position. The Duke listened,
+not much affected; nay, with something approaching indifference.
+
+"It is a question of four days then?" he rejoined, as he painfully
+moved himself on his litter. They had made him as comfortable as they
+could, screening the head of his couch, which was towards the hut
+door, with a screen of wattle. Against one wall, if wall that could be
+called which was of like make with the screen, ran a low bench of
+green turves, and on this des Ageaux was seated.
+
+"Of four days--and nights," the Lieutenant made answer, masking a
+slight shiver. He was not thinking of his own position, but of the
+young Countess; neither her fears nor the courage with which she
+controlled them were a secret from him. "To-day is Saturday. The
+Countess's men should be here by Monday, your men, M. de Joyeuse, by
+Wednesday. All will be well then; and I doubt not with such support we
+can handle the Captain of Vlaye. But until then we run a double risk."
+
+"Of Vlaye, of course."
+
+"And of our own people if anything occur to exasperate them."
+
+Joyeuse laughed recklessly. "_Vogue la galère!_" he cried. "The plot
+grows thicker. I came for adventure, and I have it. Ah, man, if you
+had lived within the four walls of a convent!"
+
+Des Ageaux shook his head. He knew the wanton courage of the man, who,
+sick and helpless, found joy in the peril that surrounded them. But he
+was very far from sharing the feeling. The dangers that threatened the
+party lay heavy on the man who was responsible for all. The tremors of
+the young girl who must share his risk that evening, the bitter
+reproaches of the Abbess and her father, even the confidence that
+Bonne's eyes rather than her lips avowed, all tormented him; so that
+to see this man revelling in that which troubled him so sorely,
+insulted his reason.
+
+"I fancy, my lord," he said, a faint note of resentment in his tone,
+"if you had had to face these rogues this morning you had been less
+confident this evening."
+
+"Were they so spiteful?" The Duke raised himself on his elbow. "Well,
+I say again, you made a mistake. You should have run the spokesman
+through the throat! Ca! Sa!" He made a pass through the air. "And
+trust me, the rest of the knaves----"
+
+"Might have left none of us alive to tell the tale!" the Lieutenant
+retorted.
+
+"I don't know that!"
+
+"But I suspect it!" des Ageaux replied warmly. "And I do beg you, my
+lord, to be guided in this. I am more than grateful for the impulse
+which led you to come to my assistance. But honestly I had been more
+glad if you had brought a couple of hundred spears with you. As it is,
+the least imprudence may cost us more than our own lives! And it
+behoves us all to remember that!"
+
+"The least imprudence!"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+The Duke laughed softly--at nothing that appeared. "So!" he said. "The
+least imprudence may destroy us, may it? The least imprudence!" And
+then, suddenly sobered, he fixed his eyes on the Lieutenant. "But what
+of letting your prisoner go, eh? What of that? Was not that an
+imprudence, most wise Solomon?"
+
+"A very great one!" des Ageaux replied with a sigh.
+
+"What shall you do when, to-morrow morning, they claim his trial?"
+
+"What I can," the Lieutenant answered, frowning and sitting more
+erect. "See that the Countess returns early to this side; where the
+Bat must make the best dispositions he can for your safety. Meanwhile,
+I shall tell them and make them see reason if I can!"
+
+"Lord!" the Duke said with genuine gusto, "I wish I were in your
+place!"
+
+"I wish you were," des Ageaux replied. "And still more that I had the
+rogue by the leg again."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Do I?" the Lieutenant repeated in astonishment. "I do indeed. The
+odds are they will maintain that we released him on purpose, and
+dearly we may pay for it!"
+
+For a moment the Duke, flat on his back, looked thoughtful. Then,
+"Umph!" he said, "you think so? But you were always a croaker, des
+Ageaux, and you are making the worst of it! Still--you would like to
+lay your hand on him, would you?"
+
+"I would indeed!"
+
+The Duke rose on his elbow. "Would you mind giving me--I am a little
+cold--that cloak?" he said. "No," as des Ageaux moved to do it, "not
+that one under your hand--the small one! Thank you. I----"
+
+He could not finish. He was shaking with laughter--which he vainly
+tried to repress. Des Ageaux stared. And then, "What have I done to
+amuse you so much, my lord?" he asked coldly, as he rose.
+
+"Much and little," the Duke answered, still shaking.
+
+"Much or little," des Ageaux retorted, "you will do yourself no good
+by laughing so violently. If your wound, my lord, sets to bleeding
+again----"
+
+"Pray for the soul of Henry, Duke of Joyeuse, Count of Bouchage!" the
+Duke replied lightly. Yet on the instant, and by a transition so
+abrupt as to sound incredible to men of these days, he composed his
+face, groped for his rosary, and began to say his offices. The
+suddenness of the change, the fervour of his manner, the earnestness
+of his voice astonished the Lieutenant, intimately as he knew this
+strange man. Awhile he waited, then he rose and made for the door.
+
+But Joyeuse--not the Duke of three minutes before, but Frère Ange of
+the Capuchin convent--stopped him with a movement of his eyes. "And
+why not," said he, "to-day as well as to-morrow? No man need be afraid
+to die who prepares himself. The soldier above all, Lieutenant, for
+the true secret of courage is to repent. Ay, to repent," he continued
+in a voice, sweet and thrilling, and with a look in his eyes strangely
+gentle and compelling. "Friend, are you prepared? Have you confessed
+lately? If not, kneel down! Kneel, man, and let us say a dozen aves,
+and a couple of Paternosters! It will be no time wasted," he continued
+anxiously. "No man has sinned more than I have. No man, no man! Yet I
+face death like one in a thousand! And why? Why, man? Because it is
+not I, but----"
+
+But there are things too high for the level of such narrations as
+this, and too grave for such treatment as is here essayed. The
+character of this man was so abnormal, he played with so much
+enthusiasm his alternate _rôles_, that without this passing glimpse of
+his rarer side--that side which in the intervals of wild revelry led
+him to dying beds and sick men's couches--but one-half of him could be
+understood. Not that he was quite alone in the possession of this
+trait. It was a characteristic of the age to combine the most flagrant
+sins with the strictest observances; and a few like M. de Joyeuse
+added to both a real, if intermittent and hysterical, repentance.
+
+On this occasion it was not long before he showed his other face. The
+Abbess, after waiting without and fretting much--for she had returned
+to the purpose momentarily abandoned, and the length of the interview
+alarmed her--won entrance at last. She exchanged a cold greeting with
+the departing Lieutenant, then took his place, book in hand, on the
+green bench. For a while there was silence. She had so far played her
+part with success. The Duke knew not whether to call her saint or
+woman; and that he might remain in that doubt she now left it to him
+to speak. At the same time she left him at liberty to look: for she
+knew that bending thus at her devotions she must appear more striking
+to his jaded senses. And he, for a time, was mute also, and
+thoughtful; so much he gave to the scene just ended.
+
+It is possible that the silence was prolonged by the chance of
+considering her at leisure which she was careful to afford him. He was
+still weak, the better side of him was still uppermost; and handsome
+as she was, he saw her through a medium of his own, in a halo of
+meekness and goodness and purity. Thus viewed she fell in with his
+higher mood, she was a part of it, she prolonged it. A time would
+come, would most certainly come, when one of the wildest libertines of
+his day would see her otherwise, and in the woman forget the saint.
+But it had not yet come. And the Abbess, with her pure, cold profile,
+bent over her book, and, with her thoughts apparently in heaven, knew
+also that her time had not yet come.
+
+Though her face betrayed nothing, she was in an angry mood. She had
+gained little by the altercation with des Ageaux; and though the
+simplicity which he had betrayed in his dealings with the peasants
+excited her boundless contempt--he, to pit himself against M. de
+Vlaye!--the peril which it brought upon all heightened that contempt
+to anger. If the peril had been his only, or included the Countess
+only, if it had threatened those only whom she could so well spare,
+and towards whose undoing her brain was busily working, she could have
+borne it bravely and gaily.
+
+But the case was far other; and something she regretted that she had
+not bowed to her first impulse in the chapel and called to M. de
+Vlaye, and gone to him--ay, gone to him empty-handed as she was,
+without the triumph of which she had dreamed. For the jeopardy in
+which she and all her family now stood put her in a dilemma. If the
+Lieutenant kept faith with the peasants and all went well, it would go
+ill with her lover. If, on the contrary, M. des Ageaux failed to
+restrain the peasants, it might go ill with herself.
+
+It came always to this: she must win over the Duke. Of the allies
+against Vlaye, he, with his hundred and fifty horse, due to arrive on
+the Wednesday, with the larger support which he could summon if it
+were necessary, and with his favour at Court, was by far the most
+formidable. Detach him, and the Lieutenant with his handful of riders,
+backed though he might be by the Countess's men, and the peasant rout
+would be very likely to fail. It came back then always to this: she
+must win the Duke. As she pondered, with her eyes on her book, as she
+considered again and anew this resolution, the noises of the camp, the
+Bat's sharp word of command--for he had fallen imperturbably to
+drilling as if that were the one thing necessary--the Vicomte's
+querulous voice, and the more distant babel of the peasants' quarter,
+all added weight to her thoughts. And then on a sudden an alien sound
+broke the current. The man lying beside her laughed.
+
+She glanced at him, startled for the moment out of her _rôle_. The
+Duke was shaking with merriment. Confused, not understanding, she
+rose. "My lord," she said, half offended, "what is it? What moves
+you?"
+
+"A rare joke," he answered. "I was loth to interrupt your thoughts,
+fair sister, but 'twas too much for me." He fell to laughing again.
+
+"You will injure yourself, my lord," she said, chiding him gently, "if
+you laugh so violently."
+
+"Oh, but----" The litter shook under him.
+
+"At least," she said, with a look more tender and less saintly than
+she had yet permitted herself, "you will tell me what it is! What----"
+
+"Raise that--the cloak!" he said. He pointed with his hand. "Remove
+it, I mean, and you will see what--what you will see!"
+
+She obeyed and immediately recoiled with a low cry, the cloak in her
+hand. "_Mon Dieu!_" she whispered, with the colour gone from her
+cheeks. "Who--who is he? Who is he?" She shuddered.
+
+The man her act had revealed rose from his hiding-place, his face
+whiter than hers, his haggard, shifty eyes betraying his terror.
+
+"My lord!" he cried, "you will not betray me? My lord, you passed your
+word!"
+
+"Pah, coward, be silent!" the Duke answered. He turned to the Abbess,
+his eyes dancing. "Do you know him?" he asked.
+
+"He is M. de Vlaye's man," she said. "The prisoner!" She was pale and
+she frowned, her hands pressed to her breast.
+
+"Whom they are so anxious to hang!" the Duke replied, chuckling. "And
+whom des Ageaux is so anxious to have under his hand! Ha! ha! Those
+were his words! Under his hand! When he touched the cloak I thought I
+should have died. And you, rascal, what did you think? You thought you
+were going to die, I'll be sworn!"
+
+"My lord--my lord!" the man faltered the words, holding out imploring
+hands.
+
+"Ay, I'll wager you did!" Joyeuse replied. "Wished you had let me
+confess you then, I'll be sworn! He'd not have it, good sister, when I
+offered it, because it was too like the end--the rope and the tree!"
+
+"My lord! My lord!" Fear had driven all but those two words from the
+man's mouth.
+
+And certainly if man had ever ground for fear, he had. In that hut of
+wattle, open to the sky, open in a dozen places to the curious eye, he
+had heard the voices, the cries, the threats of his pursuers. The
+first that entered must see him, even if this mad lord who played with
+his life as lightly as he had in the beginning shielded it did not
+summon them to take him.
+
+Verily, as he stood, the cloak plucked from him, with every opening in
+the hut's walls an eye, he tasted the bitterness of death. And in the
+amused face of his protector, in the girl's cold frowning gaze, what
+of sympathy, of feeling, of pity? Not a jot. Not a sign. To the one a
+jest, to the other a peril, he was to neither akin.
+
+As it seemed. But a few seconds saw a change. The Abbess, in the first
+flush of amazement, had come near to forgetting her part. Under other
+circumstances the trembling wretch before her might have claimed and
+gained her sympathy, for he was one of Vlaye's men. At any rate, his
+punishment by des Ageaux would have added one more to the list of the
+Lieutenant's offences. But as it was she saw in him only a root, so
+long as he lay hidden, of utmost peril to all her party; a thing to be
+cast to the wolves, if she and those who rode in the chariot with her
+were to escape. Her first feeling, therefore--and her face must have
+betrayed it had the Duke looked at her at the first--had been one of
+fierce repulsion. Her natural impulse had been the impulse to call for
+help and give the man up!
+
+But in time, with a kind of shock of the mind that turned her hot, she
+remembered. The Duke was not one to see his will or his whim thwarted
+lightly. And she, the saint, whose book of offices still lay where it
+had fallen at her feet, she to lend herself to harshness! She to show
+herself void of pity! Hurriedly she forced words to her lips, and did
+what she could to match her face to their meaning.
+
+"My lord, blessed are the merciful," she murmured with a slight but
+irrepressible shudder. "You who"--her words stuck a little--"have been
+spared so lately should be mercy itself."
+
+"My sister," the Duke said slowly, "you are more than mercy!" And
+he looked at her, his lips still smiling, but his eyes grave. He
+knew--was ever Frenchman who did not know--the value of his own
+courage. He knew that to act as a mere whim led him to act was not in
+many, where life was in question; and to see a woman rise thus to his
+level, ay, and rise in a moment and unasked, touched him with a new
+and ardent admiration. His eyes, as he looked, grew tender.
+
+"You, too, will protect him?" he said.
+
+"Who am I that I should do otherwise?" she answered. She spoke the
+words so well she seemed to him an angel. And to the man----
+
+The man fell at her feet, seized the hem of her robe, kissed it, clung
+to it, sobbed broken words of thanks over it, gave way to transports
+of gratitude. To him, too, she was an angel. And while she reflected,
+"I can still give him up if I think better of it," the Duke watched
+her with moist eyes, finding that holy in her case which in his own
+had been but a jest, the freak of a man in love with danger, and proud
+of seeking it by every road.
+
+Presently "Now, man, to your cloak!" he said. "And you, sister," he
+continued, willing to hear the words again, "you are sure that you are
+not afraid?"
+
+"I am no more afraid," she replied, with downcast eyes and hands
+crossed upon her breast, "than I was when I stayed alone with you by
+the river, my lord. There was no other who could stay."
+
+"Say instead, who dared to stay."
+
+"There is no other now who can shelter him!"
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" he whispered.
+
+He followed her with his eyes after that, all his impressions
+confirmed; and as it was rare in those days to find the good also the
+beautiful, the imprint made on him was deep. She thrilled him as no
+woman had thrilled him since the days of his boyhood and his first
+gallantries. His feeling for her elevated him, purified him. As he
+watched her moving to and fro in his service, a great content stole
+over him. Once, when she bent to his couch to do him some office, he
+contrived to touch her hand with his. So might an anchorite have
+touched the wood of the true Cross--so reverent, so humble, so full of
+adoration and worship was the touch.
+
+But it was the first step--that touch--and she knew it. She went back
+to her bench, and veiling her eyes with her long lashes that he might
+not read the triumph which shone in them, she fell again to her
+devotions--but with content in her breast. A little more, a little
+while, and she would have him at her beck, she would have him on his
+knees; and then it should not be long before his alliance with des
+Ageaux was broken, and his lances sent home. Not long! But meanwhile
+time pressed. There was the trouble; time pressed, yet she dared not
+be hasty. He was no simple boy, and one false move might open his
+eyes. He might see that she was no angel, but of the same clay as
+those of whom he had made toys all his life!
+
+As she pondered, the near prospect of success set the possibility of
+failure, through some accident, through some mischance, in a more
+terrible aspect. She hated the trembling fugitive cowering in his
+hiding-place behind the Duke's bed; she wished to heaven he were in
+des Ageaux' hands again. The danger of a mutiny on his account, a
+danger that despite her courage chilled her, would then be at an end.
+True, such a mutiny menaced the Lieutenant in the first place and the
+Countess in the second; and she could spare them. But she could not be
+sure that it would go no farther. She could not be sure that its
+burning breath would not lap all in the camp. Had she been sure--that
+had been another matter. And behold, as she thought of it, from some
+cell of the brain leapt full-grown a plan; a plan wicked enough, cruel
+enough, terrible enough, to shock even her, but a clever plan if it
+could be executed!
+
+She had little doubt that the Lieutenant would overcome the difficulty
+of the morning and succeed in persuading the peasants that he was
+guiltless of the escape of the prisoner. Suppose he succeeded, what
+would happen if it leaked out later that the prisoner had been hidden
+all the time in the Lieutenant's huts? Particularly if it leaked out
+at a time when the Lieutenant and the Countess lay in the peasants'
+power in the peasants' camp? And for choice after the arrival of the
+first batch of spears had secured the rest of the party from danger?
+What would happen to des Ageaux and the Countess in that event?
+
+It was a black thought. The beautiful face bent over the book of
+offices grew perceptibly harder. But what better fate did they deserve
+who took on themselves to mar and meddle? They who incited her very
+brothers, clownish hobbledehoys, and her mawkish sister to rise up
+against her and against _him?_ If fault there was, the fault lay with
+those who threw down the glove. The Lieutenant was come for naught
+else but her lover's destruction: and if he fell into the pit that he
+digged for another he could blame himself only. As for the girl, the
+white-faced puling child whose help M. de Vlaye's enemies were driving
+him to seek, if she, with her castles and her wealth, her lands and
+horse and foot, could not protect herself, the issue was her affair!
+Of a surety it was not her rival's!
+
+Odette de Villeneuve's breath came a little quickly, a fine dew stood
+on her white forehead. Meantime the Duke watched her and wondered in
+an enthusiasm of piety what prayer it was that so stirred that angelic
+breast, what aspirations for the good of her sinning and suffering
+sisters swelled that saintly bosom! A vision of an ascetic life spent
+by her side, of Fathers read page by page in her company, of the good
+and the noble pursued with her under cloistered yews, of an Order such
+as the modern Church had never seen--such a vision wrapt him for a few
+blissful minutes from the cold, lower world of sense.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                                FEARS.
+
+
+The Abbess was not present that evening when the hostages transferred
+themselves to the peasants' side of the camp. Had she witnessed the
+scene she had found, it is possible, matter for reflection. Hard as he
+had struggled against the surrender, the Lieutenant struggled almost
+as hard, now it was inevitable, to put a good face on it. But his easy
+word and laugh fell flat in face of a crowd so watchful and so
+ominously silent that it was useless to pretend that the step was no
+more than a change from a hut in this part to a hut in that. He who
+knew that he must, in the morning, face the men and deny them their
+prisoner--knew this too well. But, in truth, the downcast faces of his
+troopers and the furtive glances of the Vicomte's party were evidence
+that the matter meant much, and that these, also, recognised it; nor
+did the peasants, who fell in beside the two when they started, and
+accompanied them in an ever growing mob, seem unaware of the fact. The
+movement was their triumph; a sign of victory to the dullest as he ran
+and stared, and ran again. A section indeed there were who stood aloof
+and eyed the thing askance: but two of the Vicomte's party, who
+recognised among these the men whom the Lieutenant had denounced in
+the morning--the tall, light-eyed fanatic and the dwarf--held it the
+worst sign of all; and had it lain in their power they would even at
+that late hour have called back their friends.
+
+Those two were Roger and his younger sister. With what feelings they
+saw des Ageaux and the Countess ride away to share a solitude full
+alike of danger and of alarm may be more easily imagined than
+described. But this is certain; whatever pangs of jealousy gnawed at
+Bonne's heart or reddened her brother's cheek, neither forgot the
+bargain they had made on the hill-side, or wished their rival aught
+but a safe deliverance.
+
+As it was, could the one or the other, by the lifting of a finger,
+have injured the person who stood in the way, they had not lifted it
+or desired to lift it. But--to be in her place! To be in his place!
+To share that solitude and that peril! To know that round them lay
+half a thousand savages, ready at the first sign of treachery to take
+their lives, and yet to know that to the other it was bliss to be
+there--this, to the two who remained in the Vicomte's huts and gave
+their fancy rein, seemed happiness. Yet were they sorely anxious;
+anxious in view of the abiding risk of such a situation, more anxious
+in view of the crisis that must come when the peasants learned that
+the prisoner had escaped. Nevertheless, they did not talk of this,
+even to one another.
+
+If Roger kept vigil that night his sister did not know it. And if
+Bonne, whose secret was her own, started and trembled at every
+sound--and such a camp as that bred many a sound and some alarming
+ones--she told no one. But when the first grey light fell thin on the
+basin in the hills, disclosing here the shapeless mass of a hut, and
+there only the dark background of the encircling ridge, her pale face,
+as she peered from her lodging, confronted Roger's as he paced the
+turf outside. The same thought, the same fear was in the mind of
+brother and sister, and had been since earliest cock-crow; and for
+Roger's part he was not slow to confess it. Presently they found that
+there was another whom care kept waking. A moment and the Bat's lank
+form loomed through the mist. He found the two standing side by side;
+and the old soldier's heart warmed to them. He nodded his
+comprehension.
+
+"The trouble will not be yet awhile," he said. "He will send the lady
+back before he tells them. I doubt"--he shrugged his shoulders with a
+glance at Bonne--"if she has had a bed of roses this night."
+
+Bonne sighed involuntarily. "At what hour do you think she will be
+back?" Roger asked.
+
+"My orders are to send six riders for her half an hour after sunrise."
+
+"A little earlier were no worse," Roger returned, his face flushing
+slightly as he made the suggestion.
+
+"Nor better," the Bat replied drily. "Orders are given to be obeyed,
+young sir."
+
+"And the rest of your men?" Bonne asked timidly. "They will go to
+support M. des Ageaux as soon as she arrives, I suppose?"
+
+The Bat read amiss the motive that underlay her words. "Have no fear,
+mademoiselle," he said, "we shall see to your safety. You know the
+Lieutenant little if you think he will look to his own before he has
+ensured that of others. My lady the Countess once back with us, not a
+man is to stir from here. And, with warning, and the bank behind us,
+it will be hard if with a score of pikes we cannot push back the
+attack of such a crew as this!"
+
+"But you do not mean," Bonne cried, her eyes alight, "that you are
+going to leave M. des Ageaux alone--to face those savages?"
+
+"Those are my orders," the Bat replied gently; for the girl's face,
+scarlet with protest, negatived the idea of fear. "And orders where
+the Lieutenant commands, mademoiselle, are made to be obeyed; and are
+obeyed. Moreover," he continued seriously, "in this case they are
+common sense, since with a score of pikes something may be done, but
+with half a score here, and half a score there"--shrugging his
+shoulders--"nothing! Which no one knows better than my lord!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"The Lieutenant allows no 'buts,'" the old soldier answered, smiling
+at her eagerness. "Were you with him, mademoiselle--were you under his
+orders, I mean--it would not be long before you learned that!"
+
+Poor Bonne was silenced. With a quivering lip she averted her face:
+and for a few moments no one spoke. Then, "I wish M. de Joyeuse were
+on his feet," the Bat said thoughtfully. "He is worth a dozen men in
+such a pinch as this!"
+
+"The sun is up!" This from Roger.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"How will you know when half an hour is past?"
+
+The Bat raised his eyebrows. "I can guess it within two or three
+minutes," he said. "There is no hurry for a minute or two!"
+
+"No hurry?" Roger retorted. "But the Countess--won't she be in peril?"
+
+The Bat looked curiously at him. "For the matter of that," he
+said, "we are all in peril. And may-be we shall be in greater before
+the day is out. We must take the rough with the smooth, young sir.
+However--perhaps you would like to make one to fetch her?"
+
+Roger blushed. "I will go," he said.
+
+"Very good," the old soldier answered. "I don't know that it is
+against orders. For you, mademoiselle, I fear that I cannot satisfy
+you so easily. Were I to send you," he continued with a sly smile, "to
+escort my lord back----"
+
+"Could you not go yourself?" Bonne interrupted, her face reflecting
+the brightest colours of Roger's blush.
+
+"I, indeed? No, mademoiselle. Orders! Orders!"
+
+They did not reply. By this time the dense grey mist, forerunner of
+heat, had risen and discovered the camp, which here and there stirred
+and awoke. The open ground about the rivulet, which formed a neutral
+space between the peasants' hovels and the quarters assigned to the
+Vicomte, still showed untenanted, though marred and poached by the
+trampling of a thousand feet. But about the fringe of the huts that,
+low and mean as the shops of some Oriental bazaar, clustered along the
+foot of the bank, figures yawned and stretched, gazed up at the
+morning, or passed bending under infants, to fetch water. Everywhere a
+rising hum told of renewed life. And behind the Vicomte's quarters the
+brisk jingle of bits and stirrups announced that the troopers were
+saddling.
+
+In those days of filthy streets, and founderous sloughy roads, the
+great went ever on horseback, if it were but to a house two doors
+distant. To ride was a sign of rank, no matter how short the journey.
+Across the street, across the camp it was the same; and Bonne, as she
+watched Roger and the five troopers proceeding with three led horses
+across the open, saw nothing strange in the arrangement.
+
+But when some minutes had passed, and the little troop did not emerge
+again from the ruck of hovels which had swallowed them, Bonne began to
+quake. Before her fears had time to take shape, however, the riders
+appeared; and the anxiety she still felt--for she knew that des Ageaux
+was not with them--gave way for a moment to a natural if jealous
+curiosity. How would she look, how would she carry herself, who had
+but this moment parted from him, who had shared through the night his
+solitude and his risk, his thoughts, perhaps, and his ambitions? Would
+happiness or anxiety or triumph be uppermost in her face?
+
+She looked; she saw. Her gaze left no shade of colour, no tremor of
+eye or lip unnoticed. And certainly for happiness or triumph she
+failed to find a trace of either in the Countess's face. The young
+girl, pale and depressed, drooped in her saddle, drooped still more
+when she stood on her feet. No blush, no smile betrayed remembered
+words or looks, caresses or promises; and if it was anxiety that
+clouded her, she showed it strangely. For when she had alighted from
+her horse she did not wait. Although, as her feet touched the ground,
+a murmur rose from the distant huts, she did not heed it; but looking
+neither to right nor left, she hastened to hide herself in her
+quarters.
+
+She seemed to be in trouble, and Bonne, melted, would have gone to
+her. But a sound stayed the elder girl at the door. The murmur in the
+peasants' quarter had risen to a louder note; and borne on this--as
+treble on base--came to the ear the shrill screech that tells of
+fanaticism. Such a sound has terrors for the boldest; for, irrational
+itself, it deprives others of reason. It gathers up all that is weak,
+all that is nighty, all that is cruel, even all that is cowardly, and
+hurls the whole, imbued with its own qualities, against whatever
+excites its rage. Bonne, who had never heard that note before, but
+knew by intuition its danger, stood transfixed, staring with terrified
+eyes at the distant huts. She was picturing what one instant of time,
+one savage blow, one shot at hazard, might work under that bright
+morning sky! She saw des Ageaux alone, hemmed in, surrounded by the
+ignorant crowd which the enthusiast was stirring to madness! She saw
+their lowering brows, their cruel countenances, their small, fierce
+eyes under matted locks; and she looked trembling to the Bat, who,
+stationed a few paces from her, was also listening to the shrill
+voice.
+
+Had he sworn she had borne it better. But his compressed lips told of
+a more tense emotion; of fidelity strained to the utmost. Even this
+iron man shook, then! Even he to whom his master's orders were
+heaven's first law felt anxiety! She could bear no more in silence.
+
+"Go!" she murmured. "Oh, go! Surely twenty men might ride through
+them!"
+
+He did not look at her. "Orders!" he muttered hoarsely. "Orders!" But
+the perspiration stood on his brow.
+
+She saw that, and that his sinewy hands gripped nail to palm; and as
+the distant roar gathered volume, and the note of peril in it grew
+more acute, "Oh, go!" she cried, holding out her hands to him. "Go,
+Roger! Some one!" wildly. "Will you let them tear him limb from limb!"
+
+Still "Orders! Orders!" the Bat muttered. And though his eyes
+flickered an instant in the direction of the waiting troopers, he set
+his teeth. And then in a flash, in a second, the roar died down and
+was followed by silence.
+
+Silence; no one moved, no one spoke. As if fascinated every eye
+remained glued to the low, irregular line of huts that hid from sight
+the inner part of the peasants' camp. What had happened, what was
+passing there? On the earthen ramparts high overhead were men, Charles
+among them, who could see, and must know; but so taken up were the
+group below, from Bonne to the troopers, in looking for what was to
+come, that no one diverted eye or thought to these men who knew. And
+though either the abrupt cessation of sound, or the subtle excitement
+in the air, drew the Abbess at this moment from the Duke's hut, no one
+noted her appearance, or the Duke's pale eager face peering over her
+shoulder. What had happened? What had happened behind the line of
+hovels, under the morning sunshine that filled the camp and rendered
+only more grim the fear, the suspense, the tragedy that darkened all?
+
+Something more than a minute they spent in that absorbed gazing. Then
+a deep blush dyed Bonne's cheeks. The Bat, who had not sworn, swore.
+The Duke laughed softly. The troopers, if their officer had not raised
+his hand to check them, would have cheered. Des Ageaux had shown
+himself in one of the openings that pierced the peasants' town. He was
+on horseback, giving directions, with gestures on this side and that.
+A score of naked urchins ran before him, gazing up at him; and a
+couple of men at his bridle were taking orders from him.
+
+He was safe, he had conquered. And Bonne, uncertain what she had said
+in her anxiety, but certain that she had said too much, cast a shamed
+look at the Bat. Fortunately his eye was on the troopers; and it was
+not his look but her sister's smile which drove the girl from the
+scene. She remembered the Countess: she bethought her that, in the
+solitude of her hut, the child might be suffering. Bonne hastened to
+her, with the less scruple as the two shared a hut.
+
+The impulse that moved her was wholly generous. Yet when her hasty
+entrance surprised the young girl in the act of rising from her knees,
+there entered into the embarrassment which checked her one gleam of
+triumph. While the other had prayed for her lover, she had acted. She
+had acted!
+
+The next moment she quelled the mean thought. The girl before her
+looked so wan, so miserable, so forlorn, that it was impossible to
+think of her hardly, or judge her strictly. "I am afraid that I scared
+you," Bonne said, and stooped and kissed her. "But all is well, I
+bring you good news. He is safe! You can see him if you look from the
+door of the hut."
+
+She thought that the child would spring to the door and feast her eyes
+on the happy assurance of his safety. But the young Countess did not
+move. She stared at Bonne as if she had a difficulty in taking in the
+meaning of her words. "Safe?" she stammered. "Who is safe?"
+
+"Who?" Bonne ejaculated.
+
+The young girl passed her hand over her brow. "I am very sorry," she
+replied humbly. "I did not understand. You said that some one was
+safe?"
+
+"M. des Ageaux, of course!"
+
+"Of course! I am very glad."
+
+"Glad?" Bonne repeated, with indignation she could not control. "Glad?
+Only that?"
+
+The girl, her lip trembling, her face working, cast a frightened look
+at her, and then with a piteous gesture, as if she could no longer
+control herself, she turned from her and burst into tears.
+
+Bonne stared. What did this mean? Relief? Joy? The relaxation of
+nerves too tightly strained? No. She should have thought of it before.
+It was not likely, it was not possible that this child had already
+conceived for des Ageaux such an affection as casts out fear. It was
+not she, but he, who had to gain by the marriage; and prepared as the
+Countess might be to look favourably on his suit, ready as she might
+be to give her heart, she had not yet given it.
+
+"You are overwrought!" Bonne said, to soothe her. "You have been
+frightened."
+
+"Frightened!" the girl replied through her sobs. "I shall die--if I
+have to go through it again! And I have to go through it, I must go
+through it. And I shall die! Oh, the night I have spent listening and
+waiting and"--she cowered away, with a stifled scream. "What was
+that?" She stared at the door, her eyes wild with terror. "What was
+that?" she repeated, seizing Bonne, and clinging to her.
+
+"Nothing! Nothing!" Bonne answered gently, seeing that the girl was
+thoroughly shaken and unnerved. "It was only a horse neighing."
+
+The Countess controlled her sobs, but her scared eyes and white face
+revealed the impression which the suspense of the night had made on
+one not bold by nature, and only supported by the pride of rank. "A
+horse neighing?" she repeated. "Was it only that? I thought--oh!
+if you knew what it was to hear them creeping and crawling, and
+rustling and whispering every hour of the night! To fancy them
+coming, and to sit up gasping! And then to lie down again and wait
+and wait, expecting to feel their hands on your throat! Ah, I tell
+you"--she hid her face on Bonne's shoulder and clasped her to her
+passionately--"every minute was an hour, and every hour a day!"
+
+Bonne held her to her full of pity. And presently, "But he was near
+you?" she ventured. "Did not his--his neighbourhood----"
+
+"The Lieutenant's?"
+
+"Yes. Did not that"--Bonne spoke with averted eyes: she would know for
+certain now if the child loved him!--"did not that make you feel
+safer?"
+
+"One man!" the Countess's voice rang querulous. "What could one man
+do? What could he have done if they had come? Besides they would have
+killed him first. I did not think of him. I thought of myself. Of my
+throat!" She clasped it with a sudden movement of her two hands--it
+was white and very slender. "I thought of that, and the knife, and how
+it would feel--all night! All night, do you understand? And I could
+have screamed! I could have screamed every minute. I wonder I did
+not."
+
+Bonne saw that the child had gone to the ordeal, and passed through
+it, in the face of a terror that would have turned brave men. And she
+felt no contempt for her. She saw indeed that the child did not love;
+for love, as Bonne's maiden fancy painted it, was an all-powerful
+impervious armour. She was sure that in the other's place she would
+have known fear, but it would have been fear on _his_ account, not on
+her own. She might have shuddered as she thought of the steel, but it
+would have been of the steel at his breast. Whereas the Countess--no,
+the Countess did not love.
+
+"And I must go again! I must go again!" the child wailed, in the same
+abandonment of terror. "Oh, how shall I do it? How shall I do it?"
+
+The cry went to Bonne's heart. "You shall not do it," she said. "If
+you feel about it like this, you shall not do it. It is not right nor
+fit."
+
+"But I cannot refuse!" the Countess shook violently as she said it. "I
+dare not refuse. Afraid and a Rochechouart! A Rochechouart and a
+coward! No, I must go. I must die of fear there; or of shame here."
+
+"Perhaps it may not be necessary," Bonne murmured.
+
+"No? Why, even if my men come I must go! If they come to-day I must
+still go to-night. And lie trembling, and starting, and dying a death
+at every sound!"
+
+"But perhaps----"
+
+"Don't--don't!" the Countess cried, moving feverishly in her arms.
+"And, ah, God, I was cold a moment ago, and now I am hot! Oh, I am so
+hot! So hot! Let me go." Her parched lips and bright eyes told of the
+fever of fear that ran through her veins.
+
+But Bonne still held her.
+
+"It may not be necessary," she murmured. "Tell me, did you see M. des
+Ageaux--after you went from here last night?"
+
+"See him?" querulously. "No! He has his hut and I mine. I see no one!
+No one!"
+
+"And he does not come and talk to you?"
+
+"Talk? No. Talk? You do not know what it is like. I am alone, I tell
+you, alone!"
+
+"Then if I were to take your place he would not find it out?"
+
+The Countess started violently--and then was still. "Take my place?"
+she echoed in a different tone. "In their camp, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you would not," the other retorted. "You would not." Then before
+Bonne could answer, "What do you mean? Do you mean anything?" she
+cried. "Do you mean you would go?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In my place?"
+
+"If you will let me," Bonne replied. She flushed a little, conscience
+telling her that it was not entirely, not quite entirely for the
+other's sake that she was willing to do this. "If you will let me I
+will go," she continued. "I am bigger than you, but I can stoop, and
+in a riding-cloak and hood I think I can pass for you. And it will be
+dusk too. I am sure I can pass for you."
+
+The Countess shivered. The boon was so great, the gift so tremendous,
+if she could accept it! But she was Rochechouart. What would men say
+if they discovered that she had not gone, that she had let another
+take her place and run her risk? She pondered with parted lips. If it
+might be!
+
+"You are not fit to go," Bonne continued. "You will faint or fall. You
+are ill now."
+
+"But they will find out!" the Countess wailed, hiding her face on
+Bonne's shoulder. "They will find out!"
+
+"They will not find out," Bonne replied firmly. "And I--why should I
+not go? You have done one night. I will do one."
+
+"Oh, if you would! But will you--not be afraid?" The Countess's eyes
+were full of longing. If only she could accept with honour!
+
+"I shall not be afraid," Bonne answered confidently. "And no one need
+know, no one shall know. M. des Ageaux does not talk to you?"
+
+"No. But if it be found out, everybody--ah, I shall die of shame! Your
+brother, Roger, too--and everybody!"
+
+"No one shall know," Bonne answered stoutly. "No one. Besides, you
+have been once. It is not as if you had not been!"
+
+And the child, with the memory of the night pressing upon her, jumped
+at that. "Then I shall go to-morrow night," she said. "I shall go
+to-morrow night."
+
+Bonne was clear that she was not fit to go again. But she let that be
+for the moment. "That shall be as you wish," she answered comfortably.
+"We will talk about that to-morrow. For to-night it is settled. And
+now you must try if you cannot go to sleep. If you do not sleep you
+will be ill."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                         TO DO OR NOT TO DO?
+
+
+To do or not to do? How many a one has turned the question in his
+mind; this one in the solitude of his locked room, seated with
+frowning face and eyes fixed on nothingness; that one amid the babble
+of voices and laughter, masking anxious thought under set smiles. How
+many a one has viewed the act she meditated this way and that, askance
+and across, in the hope of making the worse appear the better, and so
+of doing her pleasure with a light heart. Others again, trampling the
+scruple under foot, have none the less hesitated, counting the cost
+and striving to view dispassionately--with eyes that, the thing done,
+will never see it in that light again--how it will be with them
+afterwards, how much better outwardly, how much worse inwardly, and so
+to strike a balance for or against--to do or not to do. And some with
+burning eyes, and minds unswervingly bent on the thing they desire
+have yet felt hands pluck at them, and something--be it God or the
+last instinct of good--whispering them to pause--to pause, and not to
+do!
+
+The Abbess pondered, while the Duke, reclining in the opening of his
+hut, from which the screen had been drawn back that he might enjoy the
+air, had no more accurate notion of her thoughts than had the
+Lieutenant's dog sleeping a few paces away. The missal had fallen from
+her hands and lay in her lap. Her eyes fixed on the green slope before
+her betrayed naught that was not dove-like; while the profound
+stillness of her form which permitted the Duke to gaze at will
+breathed only the peace of the cloister and the altar, the peace that
+no change of outward things can long disturb. Or so the Duke fancied;
+and eyeing her with secret rapture, felt himself uplifted in her
+presence. He felt that here was a being congenial with his better
+self, and a beauty as far above the beauty to which he had been a
+slave all his life as his higher moods rose above his worst excesses.
+
+He had gained strength in the three days which had elapsed since his
+arrival in the camp. He could now sit up for a short time and even
+stand, though giddily and with precaution. Nor were these the only
+changes which the short interval had produced. The Countess's spears,
+to the number of thirty, were here, and their presence augmented the
+safety of the Vicomte's party. But indirectly, in so far as it fed the
+peasants' suspicions, it had a contrary effect. The Crocans submitted
+indeed to be drilled, sometimes by the Bat, sometimes by his master;
+and reasonable orders were not openly disobeyed. But the fear of
+treachery which a life-time of ill-usage had instilled was deepened by
+the presence of the Countess's men. The slightest movements on des
+Ageaux' part were scanned with jealousy. If he conferred too long with
+the Villeneuves or the Countess men exchanged black looks, or muttered
+in their beards. If he strayed a hundred paces down the valley a score
+were at his heels. Nor were there wanting those who, moving secretly
+between the camp and the savage horde upon the hill--the Old Crocans,
+as they were called--kept these apprised of their doubts and fears.
+
+To eyes that could see, the position was critical, even dangerous. Nor
+was it rendered more easy by a feat of M. de Vlaye's men, who,
+reconnoitring up to the gates one evening, cut off a dozen peasants.
+The morning light discovered the bodies of six of these hanged on a
+tree below the Old Crocans' station, and well within view from the
+ridge about the camp. That the disaster might not have occurred had
+des Ageaux been in his quarters, instead of being a virtual prisoner,
+went for nothing. He bore the blame, some even thought him privy to
+the matter. From that hour the gloom grew deeper. Everywhere, and at
+all times, the more fanatical or the more suspicious drew together in
+corners, and while simpler clowns cursed low or muttered of treachery,
+darker spirits whispered devilish plans. Those who had their eyes open
+noted the more frequent presence of the Old Crocans, who wandered by
+twos and threes through the camp; and though these, when des Ageaux'
+eye fell on them, fawned and cringed, or hastened to withdraw
+themselves, they spat when his back was turned, and with stealthy
+gestures they gave him to hideous deaths.
+
+In a word, fear like a dark presence lay upon the camp; and to add to
+the prevailing irritation, the heat was great. The giant earth-wall
+which permitted the Lieutenant to mature his plans and await his
+reinforcements shut out the evening breezes. Noon grilled his men as
+in a frying-pan; all night the air was hot and heavy. The peasants
+sighed for the cool streams of Brantôme and the voices of the frogs.
+The troopers, accustomed to lord it and impatient of discomfort, were
+quick with word and hand, and prone to strike, when a blow was as
+dangerous as a light behind a powder screen. Without was Vlaye, within
+was fear; while, like ravens waiting for the carnage, the horde of Old
+Crocans on the hill looked down from their filthy eyrie.
+
+No one knew better than the Abbess that the least thing might serve
+for a spark. And she pondered. Not for an hour since its birth had the
+plan she had imagined been out of her mind; and still--there was so
+much good in her, so much truth--she recoiled. The two whom she
+doomed, if she acted, were her enemies; and yet she hesitated. Her own
+safety, her father's, her sister's, the safety of all, those two
+excepted, was secured by the Rochechouart reinforcement. Only her
+enemies would perish, and perhaps the poor fool whose presence she
+must disclose. And yet she could not make up her mind. To do or not to
+do?
+
+It might suffice to detach Joyeuse. But the time was short, and the
+Duke's opinion of her high; and she shrank from risking it by a
+premature move. He had placed her on a pinnacle and worshipped her: if
+she descended from the pinnacle he might worship no longer. Meantime,
+if she waited until his troopers rode in, and on their heels a second
+levy from Rochechouart, it might be too late to act, too late to
+detach him, too late to save Vlaye. To do or not to do?
+
+A dozen paces from her, old Solomon was pouring garrulous inventions
+into the ear of the Countess's steward; who, dull, faithful man, took
+all for granted, and gaped more widely at every lie. Insensibly her
+mind began to follow and take in the sense of their words.
+
+"Six on one tree!" Solomon was saying, in the contemptuous tone of one
+to whom Montfaucon was an every-day affair. "'Tis nothing. You never
+saw the like at Rochechouart, say you? Perhaps not. Your lady is
+merciful."
+
+"Three I have!"
+
+"And who were they?" Solomon asked, with a sniff of contempt.
+
+"Cattle-stealers. At least so it was said. But the wife of one came
+down next day and put it on another, and it was complained that they
+had suffered wrongfully. But three they were."
+
+"Three?" Solomon's nose rose in scorn. "If you had seen the elm at
+Villeneuve in my lord's father's time! They were as acorns on an oak.
+Ay, they were! Fifteen in one forenoon."
+
+"God ha' mercy on us!"
+
+"And ten more when he had dined!"
+
+"God ha' mercy on us!" Fulbert replied, staring in stricken surprise.
+"And what had they done?"
+
+"Done?" Solomon answered, shrugging his shoulders after a careless
+fashion. "Just displeased him. And why should he not?" he continued,
+bristling up. "What worse could they do? Was he not lord of
+Villeneuve?"
+
+And she was making a scruple of two lives. Of two lives that stood in
+her path! Still--life was life. But what was that they were saying
+now? Hang Vlaye? Hang--the Captain of Vlaye?
+
+It was Solomon had the word; and this time the astonishment was on his
+side. "What is that you say?" he repeated. "Hang M. de Vlaye?"
+
+"And why for not?" the steward replied doggedly, his face red with
+passion, his dull intelligence sharpened by his lady's wrongs. "And
+why for not?"
+
+Solomon was scandalised by the mere mention of it. Hang like any clod
+or clown a man who had been a constant visitor at his master's house!
+"Oh, but he--you don't hang such as he!" he retorted. "The Captain of
+Vlaye? Tut, tut! You are a fool!"
+
+"A fool? Not I! They will hang him!"
+
+"Tut, tut!"
+
+"Wait until _he_ speaks!" Fulbert replied, nodding mysteriously in the
+direction of the Lieutenant, who, at no great distance from the group,
+was watching a band of peasants at their drill. "When he speaks 'tis
+the King speaks. And when the King speaks, it is hang a man must,
+whoever he be!"
+
+"Tut, tut!"
+
+"Whoever he be!" Fulbert repeated with stolid obstinacy. And then, "It
+is not for nothing," he added with a menacing gesture, "that a man
+stops the Countess of Rochechouart on the King's road! No, no!"
+
+Not for nothing? No, and it is not for nothing, the Abbess cried in
+her heart, that you threaten the man I love with the death of a dog!
+Dogs yourselves! Dogs!
+
+It was well that the Duke was not looking at her at that moment, for
+her heaving bosom, her glowing eyes, the rush of colour to her face
+all betrayed the force of her passion. Hang him? Hang her lover? So
+that was what they were saying, thinking, planning behind her back,
+was it! That was the camp talk! That!
+
+She could have borne it better had the Lieutenant proclaimed his aim
+aloud. It was the sedateness of his preparations, the slow stealth of
+his sap, the unswerving calmness of his approaches at which her soul
+revolted. The ceaseless drilling, the arming, the watch by day and
+night, all the life about her, every act, every thought had her
+lover's ruin for their aim, his death for their end! A loathing, a
+horror seized her. She felt a net closing about her, a net that
+enmeshed her and fettered her, and threatened to hold her motionless
+and powerless, while they worked their will on him before her eyes!
+
+But she could still break the net. She could still act. Two lives?
+What were two lives, lives of his enemies, in comparison of his life?
+At the thought a spring of savage passion welled up in her heart, and
+clouded her eyes. The die was cast. It remained only to do. To do!
+
+But softly--softly. As she rose, having as yet no formed plan, a last
+doubt stayed her. It was not a doubt of his enemies' intentions, but
+of their power. He whose words had opened her eyes to their grim
+purpose was a dullard, almost an imbecile. He could be no judge of the
+means they possessed, or of their chances of success. The swarm of
+unkempt, ill-armed peasants, who disgusted her eyes, the troop of
+spears, who even now barely sufficed to secure the safety of her
+party, what chance had they against M. de Vlaye and the four or five
+hundred men-at-arms who for years had lorded it over the marches of
+the province, and made themselves the terror of a country-side? Surely
+a small chance if it deserved the name. Surely she was permitting a
+shadow to frighten her.
+
+"Something," the Duke murmured near her ear, "has interrupted the even
+current of your thoughts, mademoiselle. What is it, I pray?"
+
+"I feel the heat," she answered, holding her hand to her brow, that
+behind its shelter she might recover her composure. "Do not you?"
+
+"It is like an oven," he answered, "within these earth-walls."
+
+"How I hate them!" she cried, unable to repress the spirit of
+irritation.
+
+"Do you? Well, so do I," he replied. "But within them--it is nowhere
+cooler than here."
+
+"I will put that to the proof, my lord," she returned with a smile.
+And, gliding from him, in spite of the effort he made to detain her,
+she crossed the grass to her father. Sinking on the sward beside his
+stool, she began to fan herself.
+
+The Vicomte was in an ill-humour of some days' standing; nor without
+reason. Dragged, will he nill he, from the house in which his whim had
+been law, he found himself not only without his comforts, but a cipher
+in the camp. Not once, but three or four times he had let his judgment
+be known, and he had looked to see it followed. He might have spoken
+to the winds. No one, not even his sons, though they listened
+respectfully, took heed of it. It followed that he saw himself exposed
+to dangers against which he was not allowed to guard himself, and to a
+catastrophe which he must await in inaction; while all he possessed
+stood risked on a venture that for him had neither interest nor
+motive.
+
+In such a position a man of easier temper and less vanity might be
+pardoned if he complained. For the Vicomte, fits of senile rage shook
+him two or three times a day. He learned what it was to be thwarted:
+and if he hated any one or anything more than the filthy peasants on
+whom his breeding taught him to look with loathing, it was the man
+with whose success his safety was bound up, the man who had forced him
+into this ignominious position.
+
+Of him he could believe no good. When the Abbess, after fanning
+herself in silence, mentioned the arrival of the Countess's troopers,
+and asked him if he thought that the Lieutenant was now strong enough
+to attack, he derided the notion.
+
+"M. de Vlaye will blow this rabble to the winds," he said, with a
+contemptuous gesture. "We may grill here as long as we please, but the
+moment we show ourselves outside, pouf! It will be over! What can a
+handful of riders do against five hundred men as good as themselves?"
+
+"But the peasants?" she suggested, willing to know the worst. "There
+are some hundreds of them."
+
+"Food for steel!" he answered, with the same contemptuous pantomime.
+
+"Then you think--we were wrong to come here?"
+
+"I think, girl, that we were mad to come here. But not so mad," he
+continued spitefully, "as those who brought us!"
+
+"Yet Charles thinks that the Governor of Périgord will prevail."
+
+"Charles had his own neck in the noose," the Vicomte growled, "and was
+glad of company. Since Coutras it is the young lead the old, and the
+issue you will see. Lieutenant of Périgord? What has the Lieutenant of
+Périgord or any other governor to do with canaille such as this?"
+
+Odette heaved a sigh of relief and her face lightened. "It will be
+better so," she said softly. "M. de Vlaye knows, sir, that we had no
+desire to hurt him, and he will not reckon it against us."
+
+The Vicomte fidgeted in his stool. "I wish I could think so," he
+answered with a groan. "Curse him! Who is more to blame? If he had
+left the Countess alone, this would not have happened. They are no
+better one than the other! But what is this? Faugh!" And he spat on
+the ground.
+
+There was excuse for his disgust. Across the open ground a group of
+men were making their way in the direction of the Lieutenant's
+quarters. They were the same men who had met him at the entrance on
+his return with the Abbess and Joyeuse: nor had the lapse of four or
+five days lessened the foulness of their aspect, or robbed them of the
+slinking yet savage bearing--as of beasts of prey half tamed--which
+bade beware of them. They shambled forward until they neared des
+Ageaux, who was writing at an improvised table not far from the
+Vicomte; then cringing they saluted him. Their eyes squinting this way
+and that from under matted locks--as if at a gesture they were ready
+to leap back--added to their beast-like appearance.
+
+The Lieutenant's voice, as he asked the men with asperity what they
+needed, came clearly to the ears of the group about the Vicomte. But
+the Old Crocans' answer, expressed at length in a patois of the
+country, was not audible.
+
+"Foul carrion!" the Vicomte muttered. "What do they here?" while the
+Abbess and Bonne, who had joined her, contemplated them with eyes of
+shuddering dislike.
+
+"What, indeed?" Bonne muttered, her cheek pale. She seemed to be
+unable to take her eyes from them. "They frighten me! Oh, I hope they
+will not be suffered to remain in the camp!"
+
+"Is it that they wish?" the Vicomte asked.
+
+"Yes, my lord," Solomon answered: he had gone forward, listened awhile
+and returned. "They say that eleven more of their people were
+surprised by Vlaye's men three hours ago, and cut to pieces. This is
+the second time it has happened. They think that they are no longer
+safe on the hill, and wish to join us."
+
+"God forbid!" Bonne cried, with a strange insistence.
+
+The Abbess looked at her. "Why so frightened?" she said
+contemptuously. "One might suppose you were in greater danger than
+others, girl!"
+
+Bonne did not answer, but her distended eyes betrayed the impression
+which the wretches' appearance made on her. Nor when Charles--who was
+seldom off the ridge which was his special charge--remarked that after
+all a man was a man, and they had not too many, could she refrain from
+a word. "But not those!" she murmured. "Not those!"
+
+Charles, who in these days saw more of the Bat than of any one else,
+shrugged his shoulders. "I shall be surprised if he does not receive
+them," he answered. "They are vermin and may give us trouble. But we
+must run the risk. If we are to succeed we must run some risks."
+
+Not that risk, however, it appeared. For he had scarcely uttered the
+words when des Ageaux was seen to raise his hand, and point with stern
+meaning to the entrance. "No," he said, his voice high and clear.
+"Begone to your own and look to yourselves! You chose to go your own
+way and a bloody one! Now your blood be on your own heads! Here is no
+place for you, nor will I cover you!"
+
+"My lord!" one cried in protest. "My lord, hear us!"
+
+"No!" the Lieutenant replied harshly. "You had your warning and did
+not heed it! M. de Villeneuve, when he came to you, warned you, and I
+warned you. It was your own will to withdraw yourselves. You would
+have naught but blood. You would burn and kill! Now, on your own
+heads," he concluded with severity, "be your blood!"
+
+They would have protested anew, but he dismissed them with a gesture
+which permitted no denial. And sullenly, with stealthy gestures of
+menace, they retreated towards the entrance; and gabbling more loudly
+as they approached it, seemed to be imprecating vengeance on those who
+cast them out. In the gate they lingered awhile, turning about and
+scolding the man on guard. Then they passed out of sight, and were
+gone.
+
+As the last of them disappeared des Ageaux, who had kept a vigilant
+eye on their retreat, approached the group about the Vicomte. The old
+man, though he approved the action, could not refrain from giving his
+temper vent.
+
+"You are sure that you can do without them," he said, with a sneer.
+His shaking hand betrayed his dislike of the man to whom he spoke.
+
+"I believe I can," the Lieutenant answered. He spoke with unusual
+gravity, but the next moment a smile--smiles had been rare with him of
+late--curved the corners of his mouth. His eyes travelled from one to
+another, and in a low voice, but one that betrayed his relief, "I will
+tell you why, if you wish to know, M. le Vicomte."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Des Ageaux' smile grew broader, but his tone remained low. "Because I
+have news," he returned. "And it is good news. I have had word
+within the last hour that I may expect M. de Joyeuse's levies about
+nightfall to-morrow, and a day or two later a reinforcement beyond my
+hope--fifty men-at-arms whom the Governor of Agen has lent me, and
+fifty from my garrison of Périgueux. With those we should have
+enough--though not too many."
+
+They received the news with words of congratulation or with grunts of
+disdain, according as each felt about it. And all began to discuss the
+tidings, though still in the tone of caution which the Lieutenant's
+look enjoined. One only was silent, and with averted face saw the cup
+of respite dashed from her lips. A hundred men beyond those looked
+for! Such an accession must change hope to certainty, hazard to
+surety. A few days would enable the Lieutenant to match rider for
+rider with Vlaye, and still boast a reserve of four or five hundred
+undisciplined allies. While jubilant voices hummed in her ears, and
+those whom she was ready to kill because they hated him rejoiced, the
+Abbess rose slowly and, detaching herself from the group, walked away.
+
+No one followed her even with the eye; for the Duke, fatigued, and a
+little hurt that she did not return, had retired into his quarters.
+Nor would the most watchful have learned much from her movements, or,
+unless jealous beyond the ordinary, have found aught to suspect in
+what she did.
+
+She strolled very slowly along the foot of the slope, as if in pure
+idleness or to stretch limbs cramped by over-long sitting. Presently
+she came to some tethered horses, and stood and patted them, and
+looked them over; nor could any but the horses tell--and they could
+not speak--that while her hand was on them her eyes were roving the
+camp. Perhaps she found what she sought; perhaps it was chance only
+that guided her steps in the direction of the tall young man with pale
+eyes, whose violence had raised him to a certain leadership among the
+peasants.
+
+It must have been chance, for when she reached his neighbourhood she
+did not address him. She stooped and--what could be more womanly or
+more natural?--she spoke to a naked child that rolled on the trampled
+turf within arm's length of him. What she said--in French or patois,
+or that infant language of which no woman's tongue is ignorant--the
+baby could not say, for, like the horses, it could not speak. Yet it
+must have found something unusual in her face, for it cowered from
+her, as in terror. And what she said could have no interest for the
+man who lounged near, though he seemed disturbed by it.
+
+She toyed with the shrinking child a moment, then turned and walked
+slowly back to the Vicomte's quarters. Her manner was careless, but
+her face was pale. No wonder. For she had taken a step--and she knew
+it--which she could never retrace. She had done that which she could
+not undo. Between her and Bonne and Roger and Charles was a gulf
+henceforth, though they might not know it. And the Duke? She winced a
+little, recognising more plainly than before how far she stood below
+the notion he had of her.
+
+Yet she felt no remorse. On the contrary, the uppermost feeling in her
+mind--and it ran riot there--was a stormy exultation. They who had
+dragged her at their chariot wheels would learn that in forcing her to
+take part against her lover they had made the most fatal of mistakes.
+They triumphed now. They counted on sure success now. They thought to
+hang him, as they would hang any low-bred thief! Very good! Let them
+wait until morning, and talk then of hanging!
+
+Once or twice, indeed, in the afternoon she was visited by misgivings.
+The man she had seen was a mere savage; he might not have understood.
+Or he might betray her, though that could hurt her little since no one
+would believe him. Or the peasants, though wrought to fury, might
+recoil at the last like the cowards they were!
+
+But these and the like doubts arose not from compunction, but from
+mistrust. Compunction was to come later, when evening fell and from
+the door of the Duke's quarters she viewed the scene, now familiar, of
+the hostages' departure in the dusk--saw the horses drawn up and the
+two whom she was dooming in act to mount. It was then that a sudden
+horror of what she was about seized her--she was young, a mere
+girl--and she rose with a stifled cry from her stool. It was not yet
+too late. A cry, a word would save them. Would save them still!
+Impulsively she moved a pace towards them, intending--ay, for a
+moment, intending to say that word.
+
+But she stopped. A word would save them, but--she was forgetting--it
+would doom her lover! And on that thought, and to reinforce it,
+there rose before her mind's eye the pale puling features of the
+Countess--her rival! Was she to be put aside for a thing like that?
+Was it to such a half-formed child as that she must surrender her
+lover? She pressed her hands together, and, returning to her seat, she
+turned it about that her eyes might not see them as they went through
+the dusk.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                          THE HEART OF CAIN.
+
+
+Seven hours had passed.
+
+The moon had just dropped below the narrow horizon of the camp, but to
+eyes which looked up from the blackness of the hollow the form of the
+nearest sentinel, erect on the edge of the cup, showed plain against
+the paler background of sky. The hour was the deadest of the night;
+but, as the stillest night has its noises, the camp was not without
+noises. The dull sound of horses browsing, the breath of a thousand
+sleepers, the low whinny of a mare, or the muttered word of one who
+dreamed heavily and spoke in his dream, these and the like sounds fed
+a murmurous silence that was one with the brooding heaviness of a June
+night.
+
+Odette de Villeneuve--the ears that drank in the voices of the
+slumbering host were hers--stood half-hidden in the doorway of her
+quarters and listened. The inner darkness had become intolerable to
+her. The wattled walls, though they were ventilated by a hundred
+crevices, stifled her. Pent behind them she fancied a hundred things;
+she saw on the curtain of blackness drawn faces and staring eyes; she
+made of the faintest murmur that entered now a roar of voices, and now
+the hoarse beginnings of a scream. Outside, with the cooler air
+fanning her burning face, she could at least lay hold on reality. She
+was no longer the sport and plaything of her own strained senses. She
+could at least be sure that nothing was happening, that nothing had
+happened--yet. And though she still breathed quickly and crouched like
+a fearful thing in the doorway, here she could call hate to her
+support, she could reckon her wrongs and think of her lover, and
+persuade herself that this was but a nightmare from which she would
+awake to find all well with herself and with him.
+
+If only the thing were over and done! Ah, if only it were done! That
+was her feeling. If only the thing were done! She bent her ear to
+listen; but nothing stirred, no alarm clove the night; and it could
+want little of morning. She fancied that the air struck colder, laden
+with that chill which comes before the dawn: and eastwards she thought
+that she discerned the first faint lightening of the sky. The day was
+at hand and nothing had happened.
+
+She could not say on the instant whether she was sorry or glad. But
+she was sure that she would be sorry when the sun rose high and shone
+on her enemy's triumph, and Charles and Roger and Bonne, whom she had
+taught herself to despise, saw their choice justified, and the side
+they had supported victorious. The triumph of those beneath us is hard
+to bear; and at that picture the Abbess's face grew hard, though there
+was no one to see it. The blood throbbed in her head as she thought of
+it; throbbed so loudly that she questioned the reality of a sound that
+a moment later forced itself upon her senses. It was a sound not
+unlike the pulsing of the blood; not terrible nor loud, but
+rhythmical, such as the tide makes when it rises slowly but
+irresistibly to fill some channel left bare at the ebb.
+
+What was it? She stood arrested. Was it only the blood surging in her
+ears? Or was it the silent uprising of a multitude of men, each from
+the place where he lay? Or was it, could it be the stealthy march of
+countless feet across the camp?
+
+It might be that. She listened more intently, staying with one hand
+the beating of her heart. She decided that it was that.
+
+Thereon it was all she could do to resist the impulse to give the
+alarm. She had no means of knowing in which direction the unseen band
+was moving. She could guess, but she might be wrong; and in that case,
+at any moment the night might hurl upon her a hundred brutes whose
+first victim as they charged through the encampment she must be. She
+fancied that the darkness wavered; and here and there bred shifting
+forms. She fancied that the dull sound was drawing nearer and growing
+louder. And--a scream rose in her throat.
+
+She choked it down. An instant later she had her reward, if that was a
+reward which left her white and shuddering--a coward clinging for
+support to the frail wall beside her.
+
+It was a shrill scream rending the night; such an one as had distended
+her own throat an instant before--but stifled in mid-utterance in a
+fashion horrible and suggestive. Upon it followed a fierce outcry in
+several voices, cut short two seconds later with the same abruptness,
+and followed by--silence. Then, while she clung cold, shivering, half
+fainting to the wattle, the darkness gave forth again that dull
+shuffling, moving sound, a little quickened perhaps, and a little more
+apparent.
+
+This time it caused an alarm. Sharp and clear came a voice from the
+ridge, "What goes there? Answer!"
+
+No answer was given, and "Who goes there?" cried a voice from a
+different point, and then "To arms!" cried a third. "To arms! To
+arms!" And on a rising wave of hoarse cries the camp awoke.
+
+The tall form of the Bat seemed to start up within a yard of the
+Abbess. He seized a stick that hung beside a drum on a post, and in a
+twinkling the hurried notes of the Alert pulsed through the camp. On
+the instant men rose from the earth about him; while frightened faces,
+seen by the rays of a passing light, looked from hut-doors, and the
+cries of a waiting-maid struggling in hysterics mingled with the words
+of command that brought the troopers into line and manned the ground
+in front of the Vicomte's quarters. A trooper flew up the sloping
+rampart to learn from the sentry what he had seen, and was back as
+quickly with the news that the guards knew no more than was known
+below. They had only heard a suspicious outcry, and following on it
+sounds which suggested the movement of a body of men.
+
+The Bat, bringing order out of confusion--and in that well aided by
+Roger, though the lad's heart was bursting with fears for his
+mistress--could do naught at the first blush but secure his position.
+But when he had got his men placed, and lanthorns so disposed as to
+advantage them and hamper an attack, he turned sharply on the man.
+"Did they hear my lord's voice?" he asked.
+
+"It was their fancy. Certainly the outcry came from that part of the
+camp."
+
+"Then out on them!" Roger exclaimed, unable to control himself. "Out
+on them. To saddle and let us charge, and woe betide them if they
+stand!"
+
+"Softly, softly," the Bat said. "Orders, young sir! Mine are to stand
+firm, whatever betides, and guard the women! And that I shall do until
+daylight."
+
+"Daylight?" Roger cried.
+
+"Which is not half an hour off!"
+
+"Half an hour!" The lad's tone rang with indignation. "Are you a man
+and will you leave a woman at their mercy?" He was white with rage and
+shaking. "Then I will go alone. I will go to their quarters--I,
+alone!" As he thought of the girl he loved and her terrors his heart
+was too big for his breast.
+
+"And throw away another life?" the Bat replied sternly. "For shame!"
+
+"For shame, I?"
+
+"Ay, you! To call yourself a soldier and cry fie on orders!"
+
+He would have added more, but he was forestalled by the Vicomte. In
+his high petulant tone he bade his son stand for a fool. "There are
+women here," he continued, sensibly enough, "and we are none too many
+to guard them, as we are."
+
+"Ay, but she" Roger retorted, trembling, "is alone there."
+
+"A truce to this!" the Bat struck in, with heat. "To your post, sir,
+and do your duty, or we are all lost together. Steady, men, steady!"
+as a slight movement of the troopers at the breastwork made itself
+felt rather than seen. "Pikes low! Pikes low! What is it?"
+
+He saw then. The commotion was caused by the approach of a group of
+men, three or four in number, whose neighbourhood one of the lights
+had just betrayed. "Who comes there?" cried the leader of the
+Countess's troopers, who was in charge of that end of the line. "Are
+you friends?"
+
+"Ay, ay! Friends!"
+
+If so, they were timorous friends. For when they were bidden to
+advance to the spot where the Bat with the Vicomte and Roger awaited
+them, their alarm was plain. The foremost was the man who had spoken
+for the peasants at the debate some days before. But the smith's
+boldness and independence were gone; he was ashake with fear. "I have
+bad news," he stammered. "Bad news, my lords!"
+
+"The worse for some one!" the Bat answered with a grim undernote that
+should have satisfied even Roger. As he spoke he raised one of the
+lights from the ground, and held it so that its rays fell on the
+peasants' faces. "Has harm happened to the hostages?"
+
+"God avert it! But they have been carried off," the man faltered
+through his ragged beard. It was evident that he was thoroughly
+frightened.
+
+"Carried off?"
+
+"Ay, carried off!"
+
+"By whom? By whom, rascal?" The Bat's eyes glared dangerously. "By
+Heaven, if you have had hand or finger in it----" he added.
+
+"Should I be here if I had?" the man answered, piteously extending his
+open hands.
+
+"I know not. But now you are here, you will stay here! Surround them!"
+And when the order had been carried out, "Now speak, or your skin will
+pay for it," the Bat continued. "What has happened, spawn of the
+dung-heap?"
+
+"Some of our folk--God knows without our knowledge"--the smith
+whined--"brought in a party of the men on the hill----"
+
+"The Old Crocans from the town?"
+
+"Ay! And they seized the--my lord and the lady--and got off with them!
+As God sees me, they were gone before we were awake!" he protested,
+seeing the threatening blade with which Roger was advancing upon him.
+
+The Lieutenant held the lad back. "Very good," he said. "We shall
+follow with the first light. If a hair of their heads be injured, I
+shall hang you first, and the rest of you by batches as the trees will
+bear!" And with a black and terrible look the Bat swore an oath to
+chill the blood. The leader of the Countess's men repeated it after
+him, word for word; and Roger, silent but with rage in his eyes, stood
+shaking between them, his blade in his hand.
+
+The Vicomte, his fears for the safety of his own party allayed, turned
+to see who were present. He discovered his eldest daughter, leaning as
+if not far from fainting, against the doorway of the Duke's quarters.
+"Courage, girl," he said, in a tone of rebuke. "We are in no peril
+ourselves, and should set an example. Where is your sister?"
+
+"I do not know," the Abbess replied shakily. It was being borne in on
+her that not two lives, but the lives of many, of scores and of
+hundreds, might pay for what she had done. And she was new to the
+work. "I have not seen her," she repeated with greater firmness, as
+she summoned hate to her support, and called up before her fancy the
+Countess's childish attractions. "She must be sleeping."
+
+"Sleeping?" the Vicomte echoed in astonishment. He was going to add
+more when another took the words out of his mouth.
+
+"What is that?" It was Roger's voice fiercely raised. "By Heaven! It
+is Fulbert."
+
+It was Fulbert. As the men, of whom some were saddling--for the light
+was beginning to appear--pressed forward to look, the steward crawled
+out of the gloom about the brook, and, raising himself on one hand,
+made painful efforts to speak. He looked like a dead man risen; nor
+did the uncertain light of the lanthorns take from the horror of his
+appearance. Probably he had been left for dead, for the smashing blow
+of some blunt weapon had beaten in one temple and flooded his face and
+beard with blood. The Abbess, faint and sick, appalled by this first
+sign of her handiwork, hid her eyes.
+
+"Follow! Follow!" the poor creature muttered, swaying as he strove to
+rise to his feet. "A rescue!"
+
+"With the first light," the Bat answered him. "With the first light!
+How many are they?"
+
+But he only muttered, "Follow! A rescue! A rescue!" and repeated those
+words in such a tone that it was plain that he no longer understood
+them, but said them mechanically. Perhaps they had been the last he
+had uttered before he was struck down.
+
+The Bat saw how it was with him; he had seen men in that state before.
+"With the first light!" he said, to soothe him. "With the first light
+we follow!" Then turning to his men he bade them carry the poor fellow
+in and see to his hurts.
+
+Roger sprang forward, eager to help. And they were bearing the man to
+the rear, and the Abbess had taken heart to uncover her eyes, while
+still averting them, when a strange sound broke from her lips--lips
+blanched in an instant to the colour of paper. It caught the ear of
+the Bat, who stood nearest to her. He turned. The Abbess, with arm
+outstretched, was pointing to the door of the Countess's hut. There,
+visible, though she seemed to shrink from sight, and even raised her
+hand in deprecation, stood the Countess herself.
+
+"By Heaven!" the Bat cried. And he stood. While Roger, in place of
+advancing, gazed on her as on a ghost.
+
+She tried to speak, but no sound came. And for the Abbess she had as
+easily spoken as the dead. Her senses tottered, the slim figure danced
+before her eyes, the voices of those who spoke came from a great way
+off.
+
+It was the Vicomte who, being the least concerned, was first to find
+his voice. "Is it you, Countess?" he quavered.
+
+The Countess nodded. She could not speak.
+
+"But how--how have you escaped?"
+
+"Ay, how?" the Bat chimed in more soberly. He saw that it was no
+phantom, though the mystery seemed none the less for that. "How come
+you here, Countess? How--am I mad, or did you not go to their quarters
+at sundown?"
+
+"No," she whispered. "I did not go." She framed the words with
+difficulty. Between shame and excitement she seemed ready to sink into
+the earth.
+
+"No? You did not? Then who--who did go? Some one went."
+
+She made a vain attempt to speak. Then commanding herself--
+
+"Bonne went--in my place," she cried. And clapping her hands to her
+face in a paroxysm of grief, she leant, weeping, against the post of
+the door.
+
+They looked at one another and began to understand, and to see. And
+one had opened his mouth to speak, when a strangled cry drew all eyes
+to the Abbess. She seemed to be striving to put something from her.
+Her staring eyes, her round mouth of horror, her waving fingers made
+up a picture of terror comparable only to one of those masks which the
+Greeks used in their tragedies of fate. A moment she showed thus, and
+none of those who turned eye on her doubted that they were looking on
+a stress of passion beside which the Countess's grief was but a puny
+thing. The next moment she fell her length in a swoon.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+When she came to herself an hour later she lay for a time with eyes
+open but vacant, eyes which saw but conveyed no image to the ailing
+brain. The sun was still low. Its shafts darting through the
+interstices in the wall of the hut were laden with a million dancing
+motes, which formed a shifting veil of light between her eyes and the
+roof. She seemed to have been gazing at this a whole æon when the
+first conscious thought pierced her mind, and she asked herself where
+she was.
+
+Where? Not in her own lodging, nor alone. This was borne in on her.
+For on one side of her couch crouched one of her women; on the other
+knelt the Countess, her face hidden. In the doorway behind the head of
+the bed, and so beyond the range of her vision, were others; the low
+drone of voices, her father's, the Duke's, penetrated one by one to
+her senses still dulled by the shock she had suffered. Something had
+happened then; something serious to her, or she would not lie thus
+surrounded with watchers on all sides of her bed. Had she been ill?
+
+She considered this silently, and little by little began to remember:
+the flight to the camp, the camp life, the Duke's hut in which she had
+passed most of her time in the camp. Yes, she was in the Duke's hut,
+and that was his voice. She was lying on his couch. They had been
+besieged, she remembered. Had she been wounded? From under half-closed
+lids she scrutinised the two women beside her. The one she knew. The
+other must be her sister. Yes, her sister would be the first to come,
+the first to aid her. But it was not her sister. It was----
+
+She knew.
+
+She called on God and lay white and mute, shaking violently, but with
+closed eyes. The women rose and looked at her, and suggested remedies,
+and implored her to speak. But she lay cold and dumb, and only from
+time to time by violent fits of trembling showed that she was alive.
+What had she done? What had she done?
+
+The women could make nothing of her. Nor when they had tried their
+utmost could her father, though he came and chid her querulously; his
+tone the sharper for the remorse he was feeling. He had had an hour to
+think; and during that hour the obedience which his less cherished
+daughter had ever paid him, her cheerful care of him, her patience
+with him, had risen before him; and, alas, with these thoughts, the
+memory of many an unkind word and act, many a taunt flung at her as
+lightly as at the dog that cumbered the hearth. To balance the
+account, and a little perhaps because the way in which Odette took it
+was an added reproach to him, he spoke harshly to the Abbess--such is
+human nature! But, for all the effect his words had on her, he might
+have addressed a stone. That which she had done thundered too loudly
+in her ears for another's voice to enter.
+
+She had not loved her sister over dearly, and into such love as she
+had given contempt had entered largely. But she was her sister. She
+was her sister! Memories of childish days in the garden at Villeneuve,
+when Bonne had clung to her hand and run beside her, and prattled,
+and played, and quarrelled, and yielded to her--being always the
+gentler--rose in her mind; and memories of little words and acts, and
+of Bonne's face on this occasion and on that! And dry-eyed she shook
+with horror of the thing she had done. Her sister! She had done her
+sister to death more cruelly, more foully, more barbarously, than if
+she had struck her lifeless at her feet.
+
+An age, it seemed to her, she lay in this state, cold, paralysed,
+without hope. Then a word caught her ear and fixed her attention.
+
+"They have been away two hours," Joyeuse muttered, speaking low to the
+Vicomte. "They should be back."
+
+"What could they do?" the Vicomte answered in a tone of despair.
+
+"Forty swords can do much," Joyeuse answered hardily. "Were I sound I
+should know what to do. And that right well!"
+
+"They started too late."
+
+"The greater reason they should be back! Were all over they would be
+back."
+
+"I have no hope."
+
+"I have. Had they desired to kill them only," the Duke continued with
+reason, "the brutes had done it here, in a moment! If they did not
+hope to use them why carry them off?"
+
+But the Vicomte with a quivering lip shook his head. He was still
+thinking--with marvellous unselfishness for him--of the daughter who
+had borne with him so long and so patiently. For des Ageaux there
+might be hope and a chance. But a woman in the hands of savages such
+as those he had seen in the town on the hill! He shuddered as he
+thought of it. Better death, better death a hundred times than that.
+He did not wish to see her again.
+
+But in one heart the mention of hope had awakened hope. The Abbess
+raised herself on her elbow. "Who have gone?" she asked in a voice so
+hollow and changed they started as at the voice of a stranger. "Who
+are gone?" she repeated.
+
+"All but eight spears!" the Duke answered.
+
+"Why not all?" she cried feverishly. "Why not all?"
+
+"Some it was necessary to keep," Joyeuse replied gently. "Not one has
+been kept that could go. If your sister can be saved, she will be
+saved."
+
+"Too late!" the Vicomte muttered. And he shook his head.
+
+The Abbess sank back with a groan. But a moment later she broke into a
+passion of weeping. The cord that had bound her heart had snapped. The
+first horror of the thing which she had done was passing. The first
+excuse, the first suggestion that for that which she had not intended
+she was not answerable, was whispering at the threshold of her ear. As
+she wept in passionate, in unrestrained abandonment, regarding none of
+those about her, wonder, an almost resentful wonder, grew in the
+Vicomte's heart. He had not given her credit for a tithe, for a
+hundredth part of the affection she felt for her sister! For the Duke,
+he, who had seen her consistently placid, garbed in gentle dignity,
+and as unemotional as she was beautiful, marvelled for a different
+reason. He hailed the human in her with delight; he could have blessed
+the weeping girl for every tear that proclaimed her woman. By the
+depth of her love for her sister he plumbed her capacity for a more
+earthly passion. He rejoiced, therefore, as much as he marvelled.
+
+There was one other upon whom Odette's sudden breakdown wrought even
+more powerfully; and that was the Countess. While the sister remained
+stunned by the dreadful news and deaf to consolation, the poor child,
+who took all to herself and mingled shame with her grief, had not
+dared to speak; she had not found the heart or the courage to speak.
+Awed by the immensity of the catastrophe, and the Abbess's stricken
+face, she had cowered on her knees beside the bed with her face
+hidden; and weeping silently and piteously, had not presumed to
+trouble the other with her remorse or her useless regret. But the
+tears of a woman appeal to another woman after a fashion all their
+own. They soften, they invite. No sooner, then, had Odette proclaimed
+herself human by the abandonment of her grief than the Countess felt
+the impulse to throw herself into her arms and implore her
+forgiveness. She knew, none better, that Bonne had suffered in her
+place; that in her place and because of her fears--proved only too
+real--she had gone to death or worse than death; that the fault lay
+with herself. And that she took it to herself, that her heart was full
+of remorse and love and contrition--all this she longed to say to the
+sister. Before Odette knew what to expect or to fear, the younger
+woman was in her arms.
+
+One moment. The next Odette struck her--struck her with furious,
+frantic rage, and flung her from her. "It is you! You have done this!
+You!" she cried, panting, and with blazing eyes. "You have killed her!
+You!"
+
+The young girl staggered back with the mark of the Abbess's fingers
+crimson on her cheek. She stood an instant breathing hard, the
+combative instinct awakened by the blow showing in her eyes and her
+small bared teeth. Then she flung her hands to her face. "It is true!
+It is true!" she sobbed. "But I did not know!"
+
+"Know?" the Abbess cried back relentlessly; and she was going to add
+other and madder and more insulting words, when her father's face of
+amazement checked her. She fell back sullenly, and with a gesture of
+despair turned her face to the wall.
+
+The Vicomte was on his feet, shocked by what had passed. He began to
+babble words of apology, of excuse; while Joyeuse, ravished, strange
+to say, by the spirit of the woman he had deemed above anger and above
+passion, smiled exultant, wondering what new, what marvellous, what
+incomparable side of herself this wonderful woman would next exhibit.
+He who had exhausted all common types, all common moods, saw that he
+had here the quintessence both of heaven and earth. Her beauty, her
+meekness, her indignation, her sorrow--what an amalgam was here! And
+how all qualities became her!
+
+Had Roger been there he had taken, it is possible, another view. But
+he was not; and presently into the halting flow of the Vicomte's words
+crept a murmur, a tramp of feet, a sound indescribable, but
+proclaiming news. He broke off. "What is it?" he said. "What is it?"
+
+"News! Ay, news, for a hundred crowns!" the Duke answered. He moved to
+the door.
+
+The Countess, her face bedabbled with tears, tears of outraged pride
+as well as grief, stayed her sobs and looked in the same direction.
+Even the Abbess caught the infection, and raising her head from the
+pillow listened with parted lips and staring eyes. News! There was
+news. But what was it? Good or bad? The Abbess, her heart standing
+still, bit her lip till the blood came.
+
+The murmur of voices drew nearer.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                           TWO IN THE MILL.
+
+
+It is possible that Bonne did not herself know in what proportions
+pity and a warmer sentiment entered into her motives when she
+undertook to pass for the Countess and assume the girl's risks.
+Certainly her first thought was for the Countess; and, for the rest,
+she felt herself cleared from the reproach of unmaidenliness by the
+danger of the step which she was taking. Even so, as she rode across
+the camp in the dusk of the first evening, into the half pain, half
+pleasure that burned her cheeks under the disguising hood entered some
+heat of shame.
+
+Not that it formed a part of her plan that des Ageaux should discover
+her. To be near him unknown, to share his peril whom she loved, while
+he remained unwitting, to give and take nothing--this was the essence
+of the mystery that charmed her fancy, this was the heart of the
+adventure on which her affection had settled. He, by whose side she
+rode, and near whom she must pass the dark hours in a solitude which
+only love could rob of its terrors, must never know what she had done
+for love of him; or know it only from her lips in a delicious future
+on which reason forbade her to count.
+
+In supporting her disguise she was perfectly successful. No suspicion
+that the girl riding beside him in depressed silence was other than
+the Countess, the unwilling sharer of his exile, crossed his mind.
+Bonne, hooded to the eyes and muffled in her cloak, sat low-hunched on
+her horse. Fulbert, who was in the secret, and to whom nothing which
+any one could do for his adored mistress seemed odd or extraordinary,
+helped her to mount and dismount, and nightly lay grim and stark
+across the door of her hut repelling inquiry. Add the fact that the
+Lieutenant on his side had his delicacy. Fortune compelled the
+Countess into his company, forced her on his protection. It behoved
+him to take no advantage, and, short of an indifference that might
+appear brutal, to leave her as much as possible to herself.
+
+Bonne therefore had her wish. He had no slightest suspicion who was
+with him. She had, too, if she needed it, proof of his honour; proof
+certain that if he loved the great lady, he respected her to the same
+extent. Love her he might, see in her a grand alliance he might; but
+had he been the adventurer the Abbess styled him, he had surely made
+more of this opportunity, more of her helplessness and her dependence.
+The Countess's fortune, the wide lands that had tempted Vlaye, what a
+chance of making them sure was his! No great lady was here, but a
+young girl helpless, terrified, hedged in by perils. Such an one would
+be ready at the first word, at a sign, to fling herself into the arms
+of her only friend, her only protector, and promise him all and
+everything if he would but save her scatheless.
+
+Bonne had imagination enough, and perhaps jealousy enough, to picture
+the temptation. And finding him superior to it--so that in the
+sweetness of her secret nearness to him was mingled no gall--she
+whispered to herself that if he loved he did not love overmuch. Was it
+possible that he did not love--in that direction? Was it possible that
+he had no more feeling for the Countess than she had for him?
+
+Perhaps for an hour Bonne was happy--happy in these thoughts. Happy
+while the tones of his even and courteous voice, telling her that she
+need fear nothing, dwelt in her ears. For that period the pleasures of
+fancy overcame the tremors of the real. Then--for sleep was in no
+haste to visit her--a chance rustle, caused by something moving in her
+neighbourhood, the passage it might be of a prowling dog, made her
+prick her ears, forced her against her will to listen, sent a creepy
+chill down her back. After that she was lost. She did not wish to
+think of such things, it was foolish to think of such things; but how
+flimsy were the walls of her hut! How defenceless she lay, in the
+midst of the savage, grisly horde, whose looks even in the daylight
+had paled her cheeks. How useless must two swords prove against a
+multitude!
+
+She must divert her thoughts. Alas, when she tried to do so, she found
+it impossible. It was in vain that she chid herself, in vain that she
+asked herself what she was doing there, if des Ageaux' presence were
+no charm against fear, if with him at hand she was a coward! Always
+some sound, something that seemed the shuffle of feet or the whisper
+of murder, brought her to earth with quivering nerves; and as by the
+Lieutenant's desire she burned no light, she could not interpret the
+most innocent alarm or learn its origin. She was no coward. But to lie
+in the dark, expecting and trembling, and thrice in the hour to sit up
+bathed in perspiration--a short experience of this left her no right
+to despise the younger girl whose place she had taken. When at last
+the longed-for light pierced the thin walls, and she knew that the
+night was past, she knew also that she looked forward to a second with
+dread. And she hated herself for it.
+
+Not that to escape a hundred such nights would she withdraw. If she
+suffered, what must the child have suffered? She was clear that the
+Countess must not go again. But during the day she was more grave than
+usual; more tender with her father, more affectionate to her sister.
+And when she rode across the camp in the evening, exciting as little
+suspicion as before, she carried with her, hidden in her dress, a
+thing that she touched now and again to assure herself of its safety.
+She took it with her to the rough pallet on which she lay in her
+clothes; and her hand clasped it under the pillow. Something of a link
+it seemed between her and des Ageaux, so near yet so unwitting; for as
+she held it her mind ran on him. It kept at bay, albeit it was a
+strange amulet for a woman's hand, the thought that had troubled her
+the previous night; and though more than once she raised herself on
+her elbow, fancying that she heard some one moving outside, the
+panic-terror that had bedewed her brow was absent. She lay down again
+on these occasions with her fingers on her treasure. And towards
+morning she slept--slept so soundly that when the light touched her
+eyelids and woke her, she sprang up in pleased confusion. They were
+calling her, the horses were waiting at the door. And in haste she
+wrapped herself in her travesty.
+
+"I give you joy of your courage, Countess!" the Lieutenant said, as he
+came forward to assist her to mount. Fortunately Fulbert, with
+apparent clumsiness, interposed and did her the office. "You have
+slept?" des Ageaux continued, as he swung himself into his saddle and
+took his place by her side. "That's good," accepting her inarticulate
+murmur for assent. "Well, one more night will end it, I fancy. I
+greatly, very greatly regret," he continued, speaking with more warmth
+than usual, "that it has been necessary to expose you to this strain,
+Countess."
+
+Again she muttered something through her closely drawn hood.
+Fortunately a chill, grey mist, through which the huts loomed
+gigantic, swathed the camp, and he thought that it was to guard
+herself from this that she kept her mouth covered. He suspected
+nothing, though, at dismounting, Fulbert interposed again. In two
+minutes from starting she was safe within the shelter of the
+Countess's hut, with the Countess's arms about her, and the child's
+grateful kisses warm on her cheek.
+
+He had praised her courage! That was something; nay, it was much if he
+learned the truth. But he should never learn it from her, she was
+resolved. She had the loyalty which, if it gives, gives nobly; nor by
+telling robs the gift of half its virtue. She had saved the younger
+woman some hours of fear and misery, but at a price too high were she
+ever to speak and betray her confidence. No one saw that more clearly
+than Bonne, or was more firmly resolved to hide her share in the
+matter.
+
+The third night she set out, not with indifference, since she rode by
+his side whose presence could never be indifferent to her, but with a
+heart comparatively light. If she took with her the charm which had
+served her so well, if it attended her to her couch and lay beneath
+her pillow, it was no longer the same thing to her; she smiled as she
+placed it there. And if her fingers closed on it in silence and
+darkness and she derived some comfort from it, she fell asleep with
+scarce a thought of the things its presence imported. For two nights
+she had slept little; now, worn-out, she was proof against all
+ordinary sounds, the rustle of a dog prowling in search of food, or
+the restless movements of a horse tethered near. Ay, and against other
+sounds as stealthy as these and more dangerous, that by-and-by crept
+rustling and whispering through the camp; sounds caused by a cloud of
+low stooping figures that moved and halted, lurked behind huts, and
+anon swept forward across an open space, and again lurking showed like
+some dark shadow of the night.
+
+A shadow fraught, when it bared its face, with horror! For what was
+that cry, sharp, wild, stopped in mid-utterance?
+
+Even as Bonne sprang up palpitating, and glared at the open doorway,
+the cry rose again--close by her; and the doorway melted into a press
+of dark forms that hurled themselves on her as soon as they were seen.
+She was borne back, choked, stifled; and desperately writhing, vainly
+striving to shriek, or to free mouth or hands from the folds of the
+coverlets that blinded her, she felt herself lifted up in a grasp
+against which it was vain to struggle. A moment, and with a shock that
+took away what breath was left in her, she was flung head and heels
+across something--across a horse; for the moment the thing felt her
+weight it moved under her.
+
+Whoever rode it held her pitilessly, cruelly heedless of the pain her
+position caused her. She could hardly breathe, she could not see, the
+movement was torture; for her arms, pinned above her head, were caught
+in the folds of the thing that swathed her, and she could not use them
+to support herself. Her one thought, her only thought was to keep her
+senses; her one instinct to maintain her grip on the long sharp knife
+which had lain under her pillow; and which had become more valuable to
+her than the wealth of the world. The hand that had rested on it in
+her sleep had tightened on it in the moment of surprise. She had it,
+she felt it, her fingers, even while she groaned in pain, stiffened
+about its haft.
+
+It was useless to struggle, but by a movement she managed at last to
+relieve the pressure on her side. The blood ceased to run so
+tumultuously to her head. And by-and-by, under the mufflings, she
+freed her hands, and by holding apart the edges of the stuff was able
+to breathe more easily, and even to learn something of what was
+happening about her. Abreast of her horse moved another horse, and on
+either side of the two ran and trotted a score of pattering naked
+feet, feet of the unkempt filthy Crocans from the hill-town, or of the
+more desperate spirits in the camp--feet of men from whom no ruth or
+mercy was to be expected.
+
+Were they clear of the camp? Yes, for to one side the water of the
+stream glimmered between the pattering feet. As she made the discovery
+the other horse sidled against the one that bore her, and all but
+crushed her head and shoulders between their bodies. She only saved
+herself by lifting herself convulsively; on which the man who held her
+thrust her down brutally with an oath as savage as the action. She
+uttered a moan of pain, but it was wrung from her against her will.
+She would have suffered twice as much and gladly to learn what she
+knew now.
+
+The horse beside her also carried double; and the after rider was a
+prisoner, a man with his hands bound behind him, and his feet roped
+under the horse's body. A prisoner? If so it could be no other than
+des Ageaux. As she swung, painfully, to the movement of the horse
+across whose withers she lay, her pendant hands lacked little of
+touching, under cover of the stuff, his bound wrists.
+
+Little? Nay, nothing. For suddenly the footmen, for a reason which she
+did not immediately divine, fell away leftwards, and the horse that
+bore the other prisoner strove to turn with them. Being spurred it
+sidled once more against hers, and though she raised herself, her head
+rubbed the rider's leg. The man noticed it, patted her head, and made
+a jest upon it. "She wants to come to me," he said. "My burden for
+yours, Matthias!"
+
+"Wait until we are through the ford and I'll talk," her captor
+answered. "What will you offer for her? But it is so cursed dark
+here"--with an oath--"I can see nothing! We had better have crossed
+with them at the stepping-stones and led over." As he spoke he turned
+his horse to the ford.
+
+She knew then that the footmen had crossed by the stepping-stones, a
+hundred yards short of the ford. And she felt that Heaven itself had
+given her, weak as she was, this one opportunity. As the men urged
+their horses warily into the stream she stretched herself out stiffly,
+and gripping the bound hands that hung within her reach, she cut
+recklessly, heeding little whether she cut to the bone if she could
+only cut the cords. The man who held her felt her body writhing under
+his hand; for she knew that any instant the other horse might move out
+of reach. But he was thinking most of his steed's footing, he had no
+fear that she could wrest herself from him, and he contented himself
+for the moment with a curse and a threat.
+
+"Burn the wench," he cried, "she won't be still!"
+
+"Don't let her go!" the other answered.
+
+"No fear! And when we have her on the hill she shall pay for this!
+When----"
+
+It was his last word. The keen long knife had passed from her hands to
+des Ageaux', from her weak fingers to his practised grip. As the man
+who held her paused to peer before him--for the ford, shadowed by
+spreading trees, was dark as pitch--des Ageaux drove the point
+straight and sure into the throat above the collar-bone. The action
+was so sudden, so unexpected, that the man he struck had no time to
+cry out, but with a low gurgling moan fell forward on his burden.
+
+His comrade who rode before the Lieutenant knew little more. Before he
+could turn, almost before he could give the alarm, the weapon was
+driven in between his shoulders, and the Lieutenant, availing himself
+of the purchase which his bound feet gave him, hurled him over the
+horse's head. Unfortunately the man had time to utter one shriek, and
+the cry with the splash, and the plunging of the terrified horse, bore
+the alarm to his comrades on the bank.
+
+"What is it? What is the matter?" a voice asked. And a score of feet
+could be heard pounding hurriedly along the bank.
+
+The Lieutenant had one moment only in which to make his choice. If he
+remained on the horse, which he could not restrain, for the reins had
+fallen, he might escape, but the girl must perish. He did not
+hesitate. As the frightened horse reared he cut his feet loose, and
+slid from it. He made one clutch at the floating reins but missed
+them. Before he could make a second the terrified animal was on the
+bank.
+
+There remained the girl's horse. But Bonne, drenched by the dying
+man's blood, had flung herself off--somehow, anyhow, in irrepressible
+horror. As des Ageaux turned she rose, dripping and panting beside
+him, her nerve quite gone. "Oh, oh!" she cried. "Save me! Save me!"
+and she clung to him.
+
+Alas, while she clung to him her horse floundered out of the stream,
+and trotted after its fellow.
+
+The pursuers were no more than thirty yards away, and but for the deep
+shadow which lay on the ford must have seen them. The Lieutenant had
+no time to think. He caught the girl up, and as quickly as he could he
+waded with her to the bank from which they had entered the water. Once
+on dry land he set her on her feet, seized her wrist and gripped it
+firmly.
+
+"Courage!" he said. "We must run! Run for your life, and if we can
+reach the wind-mill we may escape!"
+
+He spoke harshly, but his words had the effect he intended. She
+straightened herself, caught up her wet skirt and set off with him
+across the road and up the bare hill-side. He knew that not far above
+them stood a wind-mill with a narrow doorway in which one man might
+make some defence against numbers. The chance was slight, the hope
+desperate; but he could see no other. Already the pursuers were
+splashing through the ford and scattering on the trail, some running
+up the stream, some down, some stooping cunningly to listen. To remain
+beside the water was to be hunted as otters are hunted.
+
+His plan answered well at first. For a few precious instants their
+line of retreat escaped detection. They even increased their start,
+and had put fifty or sixty yards of slippery hill-side between
+themselves and danger before a man of sharper ears than his fellows
+caught the sound of a stone rolling down the slope, and drew the hue
+and cry in the right direction. By that time the dark form of the
+wind-mill was faintly visible sixty or eighty yards above the
+fugitives. And the race was not ill set.
+
+But Bonne's skirt hung heavy, her knees shook; and nearer and nearer
+she heard the pursuers' feet. She could do no more! She must fall, her
+lungs were bursting! But des Ageaux dragged her on ruthlessly, and on;
+and now the wind-mill was not ten paces before them.
+
+"In!" he cried. "In!" And loosing her hand, he turned, quick as a
+hare, the knife gleaming in his hand.
+
+But the nearest man--the Lieutenant's ear had told him that only one
+was quite near--saw the action and the knife, and as quickly sheered
+off, to wait for his companions. The Lieutenant turned again, and in
+half a dozen bounds was through the low narrow doorway and in the mill
+tower.
+
+He had no sword, he had only the knife, still reeking. But he made no
+complaint. Instead, "There were sheep penned here yesterday," he
+panted. "There are some bars somewhere. Grope for them and find them."
+
+"Yes!" she said. And she groped bravely in the darkness, though her
+breath came in sobs. She found the bars. Before the half-dozen men who
+led the chase had squeezed their courage to the attacking point, the
+bars that meant so much to the fugitives were in their places. Then
+des Ageaux bade her keep on one side, while he crouched with his knife
+beside the opening.
+
+The men outside were chattering and scolding furiously. At length they
+scattered, and instead of charging the doorway, fired a couple of
+shots into it and held off, waiting for reinforcements. "Courage, we
+have a fair chance now," the Lieutenant muttered. And then in a
+different tone, "Thanks to you! Thanks to you!" with deep emotion.
+"Never woman did braver thing!"
+
+"Then do you one thing for me!" she answered, her voice shaking.
+"Promise that I shall not fall into their hands! Promise, sir,
+promise," she continued hysterically, "that you will kill me yourself!
+I have given you my knife. I have given you all I had. If you will not
+promise you must give it back to me."
+
+"God forbid!" he said. And then, "Dear Lord, am I mad? Who was it I
+picked up at the ford? Am I mad or dreaming? You are not the
+Countess?"
+
+"I took her place," she panted. "I am Bonne de Villeneuve." The place
+was so dark that neither could see the other's face, nor so much as
+the outline of the figure.
+
+"I might have known it," he cried impulsively. And even in that moment
+of danger, of discomfort, of uncertainty, the girl's heart swelled at
+the inference she drew from his words. "I might have known it!" he
+repeated with emotion. "No other woman would have done it, sweet,
+would have done it' But how--I am as far from understanding as
+ever--how come you to be here? And not the Countess?"
+
+"I took her place," Bonne repeated--the truth must out now. "She is
+very young and it was hurting her. She was ill."
+
+"You took her place? To-night?"
+
+"This is--the third night."
+
+"And I"--in a tone of wonder that a second time brought the blood to
+her cheeks--"I never discovered you! You rode beside me all those
+nights--all those nights and I never knew you! Is it possible?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+He was silent a moment. Then, "By Heaven, it was well for me that you
+did!" he murmured. "Very well! Very well! Without you where should I
+be now?" His eyes strove to pierce the darkness in which she crouched
+on the farther side of the opening, scarce out of reach of his hand.
+"Where should I be now? A handsome situation," he continued bitterly,
+"for the Governor of Périgord to be seized and hurried to a dog's
+death by a band of brigands! And to be rescued by a woman!"
+
+"Is it so dreadful to you," she murmured, "to owe your life to a
+woman?"
+
+"Is it so dreadful to me," he repeated in an altered tone, "to owe my
+life to you, do you mean? I am willing to owe all to you. You are the
+only woman----"
+
+But there, even as her heart began to flutter, he stopped. He stopped
+and she fell to earth. "They are coming!" he muttered. "Keep yourself
+close! For God's sake, keep yourself close!"
+
+"And you too!" she cried impulsively. "Your life is mine."
+
+He did not answer: perhaps he did not hear. The Crocans who had spent
+some minutes in consultation had brought a beam up the hill. They were
+about to drive it against the stout wooden bars, of which they must
+have guessed the presence, since they could not see them. The plan was
+not unwise; and as they fell into a ragged line on either side of the
+ram, while three skirmished forward, with a view to leaping into the
+opening before the defenders could recover from the shock, the
+Lieutenant's heart sank. The form of attack was less simple than he
+had hoped. He had exulted too soon.
+
+Whether Bonne knew this or not, she acted as if she knew it. As the
+leader of the assault shouted to his men to be ready, and the men
+lifted the beam hip high, she flitted across the opening, and des
+Ageaux felt her fingers close upon his arm.
+
+He did not misunderstand her: he knew that she meant only to remind
+him of his promise. But at the touch a wave of feeling, as unexpected
+as it was irresistible, filled the breast of the case-hardened
+soldier; who, something cold by nature, had hitherto found in his
+career all that he craved. At that touch the admiration and interest
+which had been working within him since his talk with Bonne in the old
+garden at Villeneuve blossomed into a feeling infinitely more tender,
+infinitely stronger--into a love that craved return. The girl who had
+saved him, who had proved herself so brave, so true, so gentle, what a
+wife would she be! What a mother of brave and loyal and gentle
+children, meet sons and daughters of a loyal sire! And even as he
+thought that thought and was conscious of the love that pervaded his
+being, he felt her shiver against him, and before he knew it his arm
+was round her, he was clasping her to him, giving her assurance that
+until the end--until the end he would not let her go! He would never
+let her go.
+
+And the end was not yet. For his lips in that moment which he thought
+might be their last found hers in the darkness, and she knew seconds
+of a great joy that seemed to her long as hours as she crouched
+against him unresisting; while the last orders of the men who sought
+their lives found strange echo in his words of love.
+
+Crash! The splinters flew to right and left, the two upper bars were
+gone, dully the beam struck the back of the mill. But he had drawn her
+behind him, and was waiting with the tight-grasped knife for the man
+bold enough to leap through the opening. Woe betide the first, though
+he must keep his second blow for her. After that--if he had to strike
+her--there would be one moment of joy, while he fought them.
+
+But the stormers, poor-hearted, deemed the breach insufficient. They
+drew back the beam, intending to break the lowest bar, which still
+held place. Once more they cried, "One! Two!" But not "Three!" In
+place of the word a yell of pain rang loud, down crashed the
+battering-ram, and high rose--as all fled headlong--a clamour of
+shrieks and curses. A moment and the thunder of hoofs followed, and
+mail-clad men, riding recklessly along the steep hill-side, fell on
+the poor naked creatures, and driving them pell-mell before them amid
+stern cries of vengeance, cut and hacked them without mercy.
+
+Trembling violently, Bonne clung to her lover. "Oh, what is it? What
+is it?" she cried. "What is it?" Her spirits could endure no more.
+
+"Safety!" he replied, the harder nature of the man asserting itself.
+"Safety, sweetheart! Hold up your head, brave! What, swooning now when
+all is well!"
+
+Ay, swooning now. The word safety sufficed. She fell against him, her
+head dropped back.
+
+As soon as he was assured of it, he lifted her in his arms with a new
+feeling of ownership. And climbing, not without difficulty, over the
+bar that remained, he emerged into something that, in comparison of
+the darkness within the mill, was light--for the day was coming.
+Before the door two horsemen, still in their saddles, awaited him. One
+was tall, the other stout and much shorter.
+
+"Is that you, Roger?" he asked. It was not light enough to discern
+faces.
+
+The shorter figure to which he addressed himself did not answer. The
+other, advancing a pace and reining up, spoke.
+
+"No," he said, in a tone that at once veiled and exposed his triumph,
+"I am the Captain of Vlaye. And you are my prisoner."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                  THE CAPTAIN OF VLAYE's CONDITION.
+
+
+The four who looked to the door of the Duke's hut, and waited for the
+news, were not relieved as quickly as they expected. When men return
+with no news they are apt to forget that others are less wise than
+themselves; and where, with something to impart, they had flown to
+relieve the anxious, they are prone to forget that the negative has
+its value for those who are in suspense.
+
+Hence some minutes elapsed before Roger presented himself. And when he
+came and they cried breathlessly, "Well, what news?" his answer was a
+look of reproach.
+
+"Should I not have come at once if there had been any?" he said.
+"Alas, there is none."
+
+"But you must have some!" they cried.
+
+"Nothing," he answered, almost sullenly. "All we know is that they
+quarrelled over their prisoners. The hill above the ford is a
+shambles."
+
+The Vicomte repressed the first movement of horror. "Above the ford?"
+he said. "How came they there?"
+
+Roger shrugged his shoulders. "We don't know," he said. And then
+reading a dreadful question in his sister's eyes, "No, there is no
+sign of them," he continued. "We crossed to the old town on the hill,
+but found it locked and barred. The brutes mopped and mowed at us from
+the wall, but we could get no word of Christian speech from them. They
+seemed to be in terror of us--which looks ill. But we had no ladders
+and no force sufficient to storm it, and the Bat sent me back with ten
+spears to make you safe here while he rode on with Charles towards
+Villeneuve."
+
+"Villeneuve?" the Vicomte asked, raising his eyebrows. "Why?"
+
+"There were tracks of a large body of horsemen moving in that
+direction. The Bat hopes that some of the wretches quarrelled with the
+others, and carried off the prisoners, and are holding them safe--with
+an eye to their own necks."
+
+"God grant it!" Odette muttered in a low tone, and with so much
+feeling that all looked at her in wonder. Nor had the prayer passed
+her lips many seconds before it was answered. The sound of voices drew
+their looks to the door, a shadow fell across the threshold, the
+substance followed. As the little Countess sprang forward with a
+shriek of joy and the Abbess dropped back in speechless emotion, Bonne
+stood before them.
+
+"He has granted her prayer," the Duke muttered in astonishment. "_Laus
+Deo!_" While Roger, scarcely less surprised than if a ghost had
+appeared before them, stared at his sister with all his eyes.
+
+She barely looked at them. "I am tired," she said. "Bear with me a
+moment. Let me sit down." Then, as if she were not content with the
+surprise which her words caused, "Don't touch me!" she continued,
+recoiling before the Countess's approach. "Wait until you have heard
+all. You have little cause for joy. Wait!"
+
+The Vicomte thought his worst fears justified. "But, my child," he
+faltered, "is that all you have to say to us?" And to the others, in a
+lower voice, "She is distraught! She is beside herself. Can those
+wretches----"
+
+"I escaped them," she replied, in the same dull tones. "They have done
+me no harm. Let me rest a minute before I tell you."
+
+Roger stayed the inquiry after the Lieutenant which was on his lips.
+It was evident to him and to all that something serious had happened:
+that the girl before them was not the girl who had ridden away
+yesterday with so brave a heart. But, freed from that fear of the
+worst which the Vicomte had entertained, they knew not what to think.
+Some signs of shock, some evidences of such an experience as she had
+passed through, were natural; but the reaction should have cast her
+into their arms, not withheld her--should have flung her weeping on
+her sister's shoulder, not frozen her in this strange apathy.
+
+The Abbess, indeed, who had recovered from the paroxysm of gratitude
+into which Bonne's return had cast her, eyed her sister with the
+shadow of a terror. Conscience, which makes cowards of us all,
+suggested to her an explanation of her sister's condition, adequate
+and more than adequate. A secret alarm kept her silent therefore:
+while the young Countess, painfully aware that she had escaped all
+that Bonne had suffered, sank under new remorse. For the others, they
+did not know what to think: and stealthily reading one another's eyes,
+felt doubts that they dared not acknowledge. Was it possible,
+notwithstanding her denial, that she had suffered ill-treatment?
+
+"Perhaps it were better," the Duke muttered, "if we left mademoiselle
+in the care of her sister?"
+
+But low as he spoke, Bonne heard. She raised her head wearily. "This
+does not lie with her," she said.
+
+The Abbess breathed more freely. The colour came back to her cheeks.
+She sat upright, relieved from the secret fear that had oppressed her.
+"With whom, then, child?" she asked in her natural voice. "And why
+this mystery? But we--have forgotten"--her voice faltered, "we have
+forgotten," she repeated hardily, "M. des Ageaux. Is he safe?"
+
+"It is of him I am going to speak," Bonne replied heavily.
+
+"He has not--he has not fallen."
+
+"He is alive."
+
+"Thank Heaven for that!" Roger cried with heartiness, his eyes
+sparkling. "Has he gone on with Charles and the Bat?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then where is he?" She did not answer, and, startled, Roger looked at
+her, the others looked at her. All waited for the reply.
+
+"He is in the Captain of Vlaye's hands," she said slowly. And a gentle
+spasm, the beginning of weeping which did not follow, convulsed her
+features. "He saved me," she continued in trembling tones, "from the
+peasants, only to fall into M. de Vlaye's hands."
+
+"Well, that was better!" Roger answered.
+
+Her lips quivered, but she did not reply. Perhaps she was afraid of
+losing that control over herself which it had cost her much to
+compass.
+
+But the Vicomte's patience, never great, was at an end. He saw that
+this was going to prove a troublesome matter. Hence his sudden
+querulousness. "Come, come, girl," he said petulantly. "Tell us what
+has happened, and no nonsense! Come, an end, I say! Tell us what has
+happened from the beginning, and let us have no mysteries!"
+
+She began. In a low voice, and with the same tokens of repressed
+feeling, she detailed what had happened from the moment of the
+invasion of her hut by the peasants to the release of des Ageaux and
+the struggle in the river-bed.
+
+"He owes us a life there," the Vicomte exclaimed, while Roger's eyes
+beamed with pride.
+
+She paid no heed to her father's interjection, but continued the story
+of the succeeding events--the assault on the mill, and the arrival of
+Vlaye and his men.
+
+"Who in truth and fact saved your lives then," Roger said. "I forgive
+him much for that! It is the best thing I have heard of him."
+
+"He saved my life," Bonne replied, with a faint but perceptible
+shudder. She kept her eyes down as if she dared not meet their looks.
+
+"But the Lieutenant's too," the Vicomte objected. "You told us that he
+was alive."
+
+"He is alive," she murmured. And the trembling began to overpower her.
+"Still alive."
+
+"Then----"
+
+"But to-morrow at sunrise--" her voice shook with the pent-up
+misery, the long-repressed pain of her three hours' ride from
+Vlaye--"to-morrow at sunrise, he--he must die!"
+
+"What?"
+
+The word came from one who so far had been silent. And the Duke rising
+from his place by the door stood upright, supporting his weakened form
+against the wall of the hut. "What?" he repeated in a voice that in
+spite of his weakness rang clear and loud with anger. "He will not
+dare!"
+
+"M. de Vlaye?" the Vicomte muttered in a discomfited tone, "I am
+sure--I am sure he will not--dream of such a thing. Certainly not!"
+
+"M. de Vlaye says that if--if----" Bonne paused as if she could not
+force her pallid lips to utter the words--"he says that at sunrise
+to-morrow he will hang him as the Lieutenant last week hung one of his
+men."
+
+"For murder! Clear proved murder!" Roger cried in an agitated voice.
+"Before witnesses!"
+
+"Then by my salvation I will hang him!" Joyeuse retorted in a voice
+which shook with rage; and one of those frantic, blasphemous passions
+to which all of his race were subject overcame him. "I will hang him
+high as Haman, and like a dog as he is!" He snatched a glove from a
+peg on the wall beside him, and flung it down with violence. "Give him
+that, the miserable upstart!" he shrieked, "and tell him that as
+surely as he keeps his word, I, Henry of Joyeuse, who for every spear
+he boasts can set down ten to that, will hang him though God and all
+His saints stand between! Give it him! Give it him! On foot or on
+horse, in mail or in shirt, alone or by fours, I am his and will drag
+his filthy life from him! Go!" he continued, turning, his eyes
+suffused with rage, on Roger. "Or bid them bring me my horse and arms!
+I will to him now, now, and pluck his beard! I----"
+
+"My lord, my lord," Roger remonstrated. "You are not fit."
+
+Joyeuse sank back exhausted on his stool. "For him and such as he more
+than fit," he muttered. "More than fit--coward as he is!" But his tone
+and evident weakness gave him the lie. He looked feebly at his hand,
+opening and closing it under his eyes. "Well, let him wait," he said.
+"Let him wait awhile. But if he does this, I will kill him as surely
+as I sit here!"
+
+"Ay, to be sure!" the Vicomte chimed in. "But unless I mistake, my
+lord, we are on a false scent. There was something of a condition
+unless I am in error. This silly girl, who is more moved than is
+needful, said--_if_, _if_--that M. de Vlaye would hang him,
+_unless_---- What was it, child, you meant?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+It was Roger whose wits saved her the necessity. His eyes were
+sharpened by affection; he knew what had gone before. He guessed that
+which held her tongue.
+
+"We must give up the Countess!" he cried in generous scorn. "That is
+his condition. I guess it!"
+
+Bonne bowed her head. She had felt that to state the condition to the
+helpless, terrified girl at whose expense it must be performed was a
+shame to her; that to state it as if she craved its performance,
+expected its performance, looked for its performance, was a thing
+still baser, a thing dishonouring to her family, not worthy a
+Villeneuve--a thing that must smirch them all and rob them of the only
+thing left to them, their good name.
+
+Yet if she did not speak, if she did not make it known? If she did not
+do this for him who loved her and whom she loved? If he perished
+because she was too proud to crave his life, because she feared lest
+her cloak be stained ever so little? That, too, was--she could not
+face that.
+
+She was between the hammer and the anvil. The question, what she
+should do, had bowed her to the ground. She had seen as she rode that
+she must choose between honour and life; her lover's life, her own
+honour!
+
+Meanwhile, "Give up the Countess?" the Vicomte muttered, staring at
+his son in dull perplexity. "Give up the Countess? Why?"
+
+"Unless she is surrendered," Roger explained in a low voice, "he will
+carry out his threat. He goes back, sir, to his old plan of
+strengthening himself. It is very clear. He thinks that with the
+Countess in his power he can make use of her resources, and by their
+means defy us."
+
+"He is a villain!" the Vicomte cried, touched in his tenderest point.
+
+"Villain or no villain, I will cut his throat!" Joyeuse exclaimed, his
+rage flaming up anew. "If he touch but a hair of des Ageaux' head--who
+was wounded striving to save my brother's life at Coutras, as all the
+world knows--I will never leave him nor forsake him till I have his
+life!"
+
+"I fear that will not avail the Lieutenant," Roger muttered
+despondently.
+
+"No. No, it may not," the Vicomte agreed, "but we cannot help that."
+He, in truth, was able to contemplate the Lieutenant's fate without
+too much vexation, or any overweening temptation to abandon the
+Countess. "We cannot help it, and that is all that remains to be said.
+If he will do this he must do it. And when his own time comes his
+blood be upon his own head!"
+
+But the girl who shared with Bonne the tragedy of the moment had
+something to say. Slowly the Countess stood up. Timid she was, but she
+had the full pride of her race, and shame had been her portion since
+the discovery of the thing Bonne had done to save her. The smart of
+the Abbess's fingers still burned her cheek and seared her pride.
+Here, Heaven-sent, as it seemed, was the opportunity of redressing the
+wrong which she had done to Bonne and of setting herself right with
+the woman who had outraged her.
+
+The price which she must pay, the costliness of the sacrifice did not
+weigh with her at this moment, as it would weigh with her when her
+blood was cool. To save Bonne's lover stood for something; to assert
+herself in the eyes of those who had seen her insulted and scorned
+stood for much.
+
+"No," she said with simple dignity. "There is something more to be
+said, M. le Vicomte. If it be a question of M. des Ageaux' life, I
+will go to the Captain of Vlaye."
+
+"You will go?" the Vicomte cried, astounded. "You, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes," she replied slowly, and with a little hardening of her childish
+features. "I will go. Not willingly, God knows! But rather than M. des
+Ageaux should die, I will go."
+
+They cried out upon her, those most loudly who were least
+interested in her decision. But the one for whose protest she
+listened--Roger--was silent. She marked that; for she was a woman, and
+Roger's timid attentions had not passed unnoticed, nor, it may be,
+unappreciated. And the Abbess was silent. She, whose heart this latest
+proof of her lover's infidelity served but to harden, she whose soul
+revolted from the possibility that the deed which she had done to
+separate Vlaye from the Countess might cast the girl into his arms,
+was silent in sheer rage. Into far different arms had she thought to
+cast the Countess! Now, if this were to be the end of her scheme, the
+devil had indeed mocked her!
+
+Nor did Bonne speak, though her heart was full. For her feelings
+dragged her two ways, and she would not, nay, she could not speak.
+That much she owed to her lover. Yet the idea of sacrificing a woman
+to save a man shocked her deeply, shocked alike her womanliness and
+her courage; and not by a word, not by so much as the raising of a
+finger would she press the girl, whose very rank and power left her
+friendless among them, and made her for the time their sport. But
+neither--though her heart was racked with pity and shame--would she
+dissuade her. In any other circumstances which she could conceive, she
+had cast her arms about the child and withheld her by force. But her
+lover--her lover was at stake. How could she sacrifice him? How prefer
+another to him? And after all--she, too, acknowledged, she, too, felt
+the force of the argument--after all, the Countess would be only where
+she would have been but for her. But for her the young girl would be
+already in Vlaye's power; or worse, in the peasants' hands. If she
+went now she did but assume her own perils, take her own part, stand
+on her own feet.
+
+"I shall go the rather," the Countess continued coldly, using that
+very argument, "since I should be already in his power had I gone
+myself to the peasants' camp!"
+
+"You shall not go! You cannot go!" the Vicomte repeated with stupid
+iteration.
+
+"M. le Vicomte," she answered, "I am the Countess of Rochechouart."
+And the little figure, the infantine face, assumed a sudden dignity.
+
+"It is unbecoming!"
+
+"It becomes me less to let a gallant gentleman die."
+
+"But you will be in Vlaye's power."
+
+"God willing," she replied, her spirit still sustaining her. Was not
+the Abbess, whom she was beginning to hate, looking at her?
+
+Ay, looking at her with such eyes, with such thought, as would have
+overwhelmed her could she have read them. Bitter indeed, were Odette's
+reflections at this moment--bitter! She had stained her hands and the
+end was this. She had stooped to a vile plot, to an act that might
+have cost her sister her life, and with this for reward. The triumph
+was her rival's. Before her eyes and by her act this silly chit, with
+heroics on her lips, was being forced into his arms! And she, Odette,
+stood powerless to check the issue of her deed, impotent to interfere,
+unable even to vent the words of hatred that trembled on her lips.
+
+For the Duke was listening, and she had still enough prudence, enough
+self-control, to remember that she must not expose her feelings in his
+presence. On him depended what remained: the possibility of vengeance,
+the chances of ambition. She knew that she could not speak without
+destroying the image of herself which she had wrought so patiently to
+form. And even when he added his remonstrances to her father's, and
+hot words imputing immodesty rose to the Abbess's lips--words that
+must have brought the blood to the Countess's cheeks and might have
+stung her to the renunciation of her project, she dared not utter
+them. She swallowed her passion, and showed only a cold mask of
+surprise.
+
+Not that the Duke said much. For after a while, "Well, perhaps it is
+best," he said. "What if she pass into his power! It is better a woman
+marry than a man die. We can make the one a widow; whereas to bring
+the other to life would puzzle the best swordsman in France!"
+
+The Vicomte persisted. "But there is no burden laid on the Countess to
+do this," he said. "And I for one will be no party to it! What? Have
+it said that I surrendered the Countess of Rochechouart who sought my
+protection?"
+
+"Sir," the girl replied, trembling slightly, "no one surrenders the
+Countess save the Countess. But that the less may be said to your
+injury, my own people shall attend me thither, and----"
+
+"They will avail you nothing!" the Vicomte replied with a frankness
+that verged on brutality. "You do not understand, mademoiselle. You
+are scarcely more than a child, and do not know to what you are going.
+You have been wont to be safe in your own resources, and now, were a
+fortnight given you to gather your power, you could perhaps make M. de
+Vlaye tremble. But you go from here, in three hours you will be there,
+and then you will be as much in his power, despite your thirty or
+forty spears, as my daughter was this morning!"
+
+"I count on nothing else," she said. But her face burned. And Bonne,
+who suffered with her, Bonne who was dragged this way and that, and
+would and would not, in whom love struggled with pity and shame with
+joy, into her face, too, crept a faint colour. How cowardly, oh, how
+cowardly seemed her conduct! How base in her to buy her happiness at
+the price of this child's misery! To ransom her lover at a woman's
+cost! It was a bargain that in another's case she had repudiated with
+scorn, with pride, almost with loathing. But she loved, she loved. And
+who that loved could hesitate? One here and there perhaps, some woman
+of a rare and noble nature, cast in a higher mould than herself. But
+not Bonne de Villeneuve.
+
+Yet the word she would not utter trembled on her tongue. And once,
+twice the thought of Roger shook her. He, too, loved, yet he bore in
+silence to see his mistress delivered, tied and bound, to his rival!
+
+How, she asked herself, how could he do it, how could he suffer it?
+How could he stand by and see this innocent depart to such a fate, to
+such a lot!
+
+That puzzled her. She could understand the acquiescence of the others;
+of her sister, whom M. de Vlaye's inconstancy must have alienated, of
+Joyeuse, who was under an obligation to des Ageaux, of the Vicomte,
+who, affecting to take the Countess's part, thought in truth only of
+himself. But Roger? In his place she felt that she must have spoken
+whatever came of it, that she must have acted whatever the issue.
+
+Yet Roger, noble, generous Roger--for even while she blamed him with
+one half of her mind, she blessed him with the other--stood silent.
+
+Silent, even when the Countess with a quivering lip and a fleeting
+glance in his direction--perhaps she, too, had looked for something
+else at his hands--went out, her surrender a settled thing; and it
+became necessary to give orders to her servants, to communicate with
+the Bat, and to make such preparations as the withdrawal of her men
+made necessary. The Duke's spears were expected that day or the next,
+but it needed no sharp eye to discern that Vlaye's capture of the
+Lieutenant had taken much of the spirit out of the attack. The
+Countess's men must now be counted on the Captain of Vlaye's side;
+while the peasants, weakened by the slaughter which Vlaye had
+inflicted on them at the mill, and by the distrust which their
+treachery must cause, no longer stood for much in the reckoning. It
+was possible that the Lieutenant's release might reanimate the forces
+of the law, that a second attempt to use the peasants might fare
+better than the first, that Joyeuse's aid might in time place des
+Ageaux in a position to cope with his opponent. But these were
+possibilities only, and the Vicomte for one put no faith in them.
+
+He was utterly disgusted, indeed, with the turn which things were
+taking. Nor was his disgust at any time greater than when he stood an
+hour later and viewed the Countess and her escort marching out of the
+camp. If his life since Coutras had been obscure and ignoble, at least
+it had been safe. While his neighbours had suffered at the Captain of
+Vlaye's hands, he had been favoured. He had sunk something of his
+pride, and counted in return on an alliance for his daughter, solid if
+not splendid. Now, by the act of this meddling Lieutenant--for he
+ignored Vlaye's treatment both of his daughter and the Countess--all
+was changed. He had naught to expect now but Vlaye's enmity;
+Villeneuve would no longer be safe for him. He must go or he must
+humble himself to the ground. He had taken, he had been forced by his
+children to take, the wrong side in the struggle. And the time was
+fast approaching when he must pay for it, and smartly.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+                          THE ABBESS MOVES.
+
+
+That Bonne failed to read the dark scroll of her sister's thoughts
+need not surprise us; since apart from the tie of blood the two women
+had nothing in common. But that she failed also to interpret Roger's
+inaction; that, blaming herself for an acquiescence which love made
+inevitable, she did not spare him, whom love should have moved in the
+opposite direction--this was more remarkable. For a closer bond never
+united brother and sister. But misery is a grand engrosser. She had
+her lover in her thoughts, the poor girl whom she sacrificed on her
+mind; and she left the Duke's quarters without that last look at her
+brother which might have enlightened her.
+
+Had she questioned him he had discovered his mind. She did not, and
+she had barely passed from sight before he was outside and had got a
+fresh horse saddled. One thing only it was prevented his leaving the
+camp in advance of the Countess, whose people were not ready. His foot
+was raised to the stirrup when he bethought him of this thing. He left
+the horse in charge of a trooper and hurried back to the Duke's
+quarters, found him alone and put his question.
+
+"You made a man fight the other night against his will," he said, his
+head high. "Tell me, my lord, how I can do the same thing."
+
+The Duke stared, then laughed. "Is it that you want?" he answered.
+"Tell me first whom it is you would fight, my lad?"
+
+"The Captain of Vlaye."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"You said a while ago," Roger continued, his eyes sparkling, "that you
+would presently make her a widow. Better a widow before she is wed, I
+say!"
+
+The Duke smiled whimsically. "Sits the wind in that quarter?" he
+answered. "You have no mind to see her wed at all, my lad? That is it,
+is it? I had some notion of it."
+
+"Tell me how I can make him fight," Roger replied, sticking to his
+question and refusing even to blush.
+
+"Tell me how I can get the moon!" Joyeuse answered, but not unkindly.
+"Why should he risk his life to rid himself of you, who are no
+drawback to him? Tell me that! Or why should he surrender the
+advantage of his strong place and his four hundred spears to enter the
+lists with a man who is naught to him?"
+
+"Because if he does not I will kill him where I find him!" Roger
+replied with passion. And the mode of the day, which was not nice in
+the punctilios of the duel, and forgave the most irregular assault if
+it were successful, which cast small blame on Guise for the murder of
+St. Pol, or on Montsoreau for the murder of Bussy, justified the
+threat. "I will kill him!" he repeated. "Fair or foul, light or
+dark----"
+
+"He shall not wed her!" the Duke cried in a mocking tone and with an
+extravagant gesture. But in truth the raillery was on the surface
+only. The lad's spirit touched the corresponding note in his own
+nature. None the less he shook his head. "Brave words, brave words,
+young man," he continued; "but you are not Vitaux, who counted his
+life for nothing, and whose sword was a terror to all."
+
+"But if I count my life for nothing?"
+
+"Ay, if! If!"
+
+"And why should I not?" Roger retorted, his soul rising to his lips.
+"Tell me, my lord, why should I count it for more? What am I, the son
+of a poor gentleman, misshapen, rough, untutored, that I should hold
+my life dear? That I should spare it, and save it, as a thing so
+valuable? What have I in prospect of all the things other men look to?
+Glory? See me! Fine I should be," with a bitter laugh covering tears,
+"in a triumph, or marching up the aisle to a Te Deum! Court favour?
+Ay, I might be the dwarf in a masque or the fool in motley! Naught
+besides! Naught besides, my lord! And for love?" He laughed still more
+bitterly. "I tell you my own father winces when he sees me! My own
+sister and my own brother--well, they are blind perhaps. They, they
+only, and old Solomon, and the woman who nursed me and dropped me--see
+in me a man like other men. Leave them out, and, as I live, until this
+man came----"
+
+"Des Ageaux?"
+
+"Des Ageaux--until he came and spoke gently to me and said, 'do this,
+and do that, and you shall be as Gourdon or as Guesclin!'--even he
+could not promise me love--as I live, till then no man pitied me or
+gave me hope! And shall I let him die to save my stunted life?"
+
+"But it is not the saving him that is in question," the Duke replied
+gently, and with respect in his tone. He was honestly moved by this
+unveiling of poor Roger's thoughts. "She saved him."
+
+"And I'll save her," Roger replied with fervour. "I will save her
+though I die a hundred deaths. For she, too----"
+
+He paused. The Duke looked at him, a spice of humour mingling with his
+sympathy. "She, too, sees in you a man like other men," he said, "I
+suppose?"
+
+"She pitied me," Roger answered. "No more; she pitied me, my lord!
+What more could she do, being what she is? And I being what I am?" His
+chin sank on his breast.
+
+The Duke nodded kindly. "May-be," he said. "Less likely things have
+happened." And then, "But what will you do?" he asked.
+
+"Go with her and see him, take him aside, and if he will fight me,
+well! And if he will not, I will strike him down where he stands!"
+
+"But that will not save des Ageaux."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No! On the contrary, it will be he," Joyeuse retorted somewhat
+grimly, "who will pay for it. Do you not see that?"
+
+"Then I will wait," Roger replied, "until he is released."
+
+"And then," the Duke asked, still opposing, though the man and the
+plan were alike after his own heart, "what of the Countess? M. de
+Vlaye dead, who will protect her? His men----"
+
+"They would not dare!" Roger cried, trembling. "They would not dare!"
+
+"Well, perhaps not," the Duke answered, after a moment's thought.
+"Perhaps not. Probably his lieutenant would protect her, for his own
+sake. And des Ageaux free would be worth two hundred men to us. Not
+that, if I were well, he would be in question. But I am but half a
+man, and we need him!"
+
+"You shall have him," Roger answered, his eyes glittering. "Have no
+doubt of it! But advise me, my lord. Were it better I escorted her to
+the gate and sought entrance later, after he had released des Ageaux?
+Or that I kept myself close until the time came?"
+
+"The time? For what?"
+
+The speaker was the Abbess. Unseen by the two men, she had that moment
+glided across the threshold. The pallor of her features and the
+brightness of her eyes were such as to strike both; but differently.
+To the Duke these results of a night passed in vivid emotions, and of
+a morning that had crowned her schemes with mockery, only brought her
+into nearer keeping with the dress she wore--only enhanced her charms.
+To her brother, on the other hand, who now hated Vlaye with a tenfold
+hatred, they were grounds for suspicion--he knew not why. But not even
+he came nearer to guessing the truth. Not even he dreamt that behind
+that mask were passions at work which, had they discovered them, would
+have cast the Duke into a stupor deeper than any into which his own
+mad freaks had ever flung a wondering world. As it was, the Duke's
+eyes saw only the perfection of womankind; the lily of the garden,
+drooping, pale, under the woes of her frailer sisters. Of the jealousy
+with which she contemplated the surrender of her rival to her lover's
+power, much less of the step which that surrender was pressing upon
+her, he caught no glimpse.
+
+"The time for what?" the Duke repeated, with looks courteous to the
+point of reverence. "Ah--pardon, my sister, but we cannot take you
+into our counsel. Men must sometimes do things it is not for saints to
+know or women to witness."
+
+"Saints!" The involuntary irony of her tone must have penetrated ears
+less dulled by prejudgment. "Saints!" and then, "I am no saint, my
+lord," she said modestly.
+
+"Still," he answered, "it were better you did not know, mademoiselle.
+It is but a plan by which we think it possible that we may yet get the
+better of M. de Vlaye and save the child before--before, in fact----"
+
+"Ay?" the Abbess said, a flicker of pain in her eyes. "Before--I
+understand."
+
+"Before it be too late."
+
+"Yes. And how?"
+
+The Duke shook his head with a smile meant to propitiate. "How?" he
+repeated. "That--pardon me--that is the point upon which--we would
+fain be silent."
+
+"Yet you must not be silent," she replied. "You must tell me." And
+pale, almost stern, she looked from one to the other, dominating them.
+"You must tell me," she repeated. "Or perhaps," fixing Roger with a
+glance keen as steel, "I know already. You would save her by killing
+him. It is of that you are thinking. It is for that your horse is
+waiting saddled by the gate. You would ride after her, and gain access
+to him--and----"
+
+"She has not started?" Roger exclaimed.
+
+"She started ten minutes ago," the Abbess answered coldly. "Nay,
+stay!" For Roger was making for the door. "Stay, boy! Do you hear?"
+
+"I cannot stay!"
+
+"If you do not stay you will repent it all your life!" the Abbess made
+answer in a voice that shook even his resolution. "And she all hers!
+Ha! that stays you?" with a gleam of passion she could not restrain.
+"I thought it would. Now, if you will listen, I have something to say
+that will put another complexion on this."
+
+They gazed expectant, but she did not at once continue. She stood
+reflecting deeply; while each of her listeners regarded her after his
+knowledge of her; Roger sullenly and with suspicion, doubting what she
+would be at, the Duke in admiration, expecting that with which gentle
+wisdom might inspire her.
+
+Secretly she was heart-sick, and the sigh which she could not restrain
+declared it. But at last, "There is no need of violence," she said
+wearily. "No," addressing Roger, who had raised his hand in
+remonstrance, "hear me out before you interrupt me. How will the loss
+of a minute harm you? Or of five or ten? I repeat, there is no need of
+violence. Heaven knows there has been enough! We must go another way
+to work to release her. It is my turn now."
+
+"I would rather trust myself," Roger muttered; but so low that the
+words, frank to rudeness, did not reach Joyeuse's ears.
+
+"Yet you must trust me," she answered. "Do so, trust me, and follow my
+directions, and I will take on myself to say that before nightfall she
+shall be free."
+
+"What are we to do?" the Duke asked.
+
+"You? Nothing. I, all. I must take her place, as she has taken M. des
+Ageaux'."
+
+For an instant they were silent in sheer astonishment. Then, "But M.
+de Vlaye may have something to say to that!" Roger ejaculated before
+the Duke could find words. The lad spoke on impulse. He knew a little
+and suspected more of the lengths to which Vlaye's courtship of his
+sister had gone.
+
+If she had not put force on herself, she had flung him a retort that
+must have opened the Duke's eyes. Instead, "I shall not consult M. de
+Vlaye," she replied coldly. "I have visited him on various occasions,
+and we are on terms. My appearance in Vlaye, seeing that the Abbey of
+Vlaye is but a half-league from the town, will cause no surprise. Once
+in the town, if I can enter the castle and gain speech of the
+Countess, she may escape in my habit."
+
+"I hate this shifting and changing!" Roger grumbled.
+
+"But if it will save her?"
+
+"Ay, but will it?" Roger returned, shrugging his shoulders. He
+suspected that her aim was to save M. de Vlaye rather than the
+Countess. "Will it? Can you, in the first place, get speech of her?"
+
+"I think I can," the Abbess answered quietly. "Many of the men know
+me. And I will take with me Father Benet, who is at the Captain of
+Vlaye's beck and call. He will serve me within limits, if a friend be
+needed. I shall wear my robes, and though she is shorter and smaller I
+see no reason why she should not pass out in them in the twilight or
+after dark."
+
+"But what of you?" the Duke asked, staring much.
+
+"I shall remain in her place."
+
+"Remain in her place?" Joyeuse said slowly, in the voice he would have
+used had Our Lady appeared before him. "You will dare that for her?"
+
+A faint colour stole into the Abbess's cheeks. "It is my expiation,"
+she murmured modestly. "I struck her--God forgive me!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"And I run no risk. M. de Vlaye knows me, and this"--with a gesture
+which drew attention to her conventual garb--"will protect me."
+
+The Duke gazed at the object of his adoration in a kind of rapture,
+seeing already the wings on her shoulders, the aureole about her head.
+"Mademoiselle, you will do that?" he cried. "Then you are no woman!
+You are an angel!" In his enthusiasm he knelt--not without difficulty,
+for he was still weak--and kissed her hand. To him the thing seemed an
+act of pure heroism, pure self-denial, pure good-doing.
+
+But Roger, who knew more of his sister's nature and past history, and
+whose knowledge left less room for fancy's gilding, stood lost in
+gloomy thought. What did she mean? Was she going as friend or enemy?
+Influence with Vlaye she had, or lately had; but, the Countess
+released, in what a position would she, his sister, stand? Could he,
+could her father, could her friends let her do this thing?
+
+Yet the chance--to a lover--was too good to reject; the position,
+moreover, was too desperate for niceties. The thought that she was
+going, not for the sake of the Countess, but of the Captain of Vlaye,
+the suspicion that she was not unwilling to take the Countess's place
+and the Countess's risks, occurred to him. But he thrust, he strove to
+thrust the suspicion and the thought from him. Her motive and her
+meaning, even though that motive and meaning were to save the Captain
+of Vlaye, were small things beside the Countess's safety.
+
+"At any rate I shall go with you," he said at length, and with more of
+suspicion than of gratitude in his tone. "When will you be ready?"
+
+"I think it likely that he will have bidden Father Benet to be with
+him at sunset," she answered. "If we are at the priest's, therefore,
+an hour earlier, it should do."
+
+"And for safe-conduct?"
+
+"I will answer for that," she replied with boldness, "so far as M. de
+Vlaye's men are concerned."
+
+The answer chafed Roger anew. Her reliance on her influence with Vlaye
+and Vlaye's people--he hated it; and for an instant he hesitated. But
+in the end he swallowed his vexation: had he not made up his mind to
+shut his eyes? And the three separated after a few more words relating
+to the arrangements to be made. The Duke, standing with a full heart
+in the doorway, watched her to her quarters, marked the grace of her
+movements, and in his mind doomed the Captain of Vlaye to unspeakable
+deaths if he harmed her; while she, as she passed away, thought--but
+we need not enter into her thoughts. She was doing this, lest a worse
+thing happen; doing it in a passion of jealousy, in a frenzy of
+disgust. But she had one consolation. She would see the Captain of
+Vlaye! She would see the man she loved. Through the dark stuff of her
+thoughts that prospect ran like a golden thread.
+
+Roger, on the other hand, should have been content. He should have
+been more than satisfied, as an hour later he rode beside her down the
+river valley to the chapel beside the ford, and thence to the open
+country about Villeneuve. For if things were still dark, there was a
+prospect of light. A few hours earlier he had despaired; he had seen
+no means of saving the woman he adored, save at the expense of his own
+life. Now he had hope and a chance, now he had prospects, now he might
+look, if fortune favoured him, to be her escort into safety before the
+sun rose again.
+
+Surely, then, he should have been content; yet he was not. Not even
+when after a journey of four hours the two, having passed Villeneuve,
+gained without misadventure the summit of that hill on the scarped
+side of which the Countess had met with her first misfortune. From
+that point, they and the two armed servants who followed them could
+look down upon the wide green valley that framed the town of Vlaye,
+and that, somewhat lower, opened into the wide plain of the Dronne.
+They could discern the bridge over the river; they could almost count
+the red roofs of the small town that crept up from the water to the
+coronet of grey walls and towers that crowned all. Those walls and
+towers basking in the sunshine were the eyrie that lorded it over
+leagues of country seen and unseen--the hawk's nest, the _plebis
+flagellum_, as the old chronicler has it. They might, in sight of
+those towers, count the preliminaries over and all but the supreme
+risk run.
+
+For quite easily they might have fallen in with Vlaye's people on the
+road and been taken; or with M. de Vlaye himself, and with that there
+had been an end of the plan. But they had escaped these dangers. And
+yet Roger was not content; still he rode with a gloomy brow and
+pinched lips. The longer he thought of his sister's plan, the more he
+suspected and the less he liked it. There was in it a little which he
+did not understand, and more which he understood too well. His sister
+and M. de Vlaye! He hated the collocation; he hated to think that she
+must be left, willingly and by her own act, in the adventurer's power;
+and this at a moment when disappointment would aggravate a temper
+tried by the attack on him and by the part which the Vicomte had
+played in it. On what did she depend for her safety, for her honour,
+for all that she put wantonly at stake? On his respect? His
+friendship? Or his love?
+
+"I will take her place," she had said. Could it be that she was
+willing, that she desired, to take it altogether? Was she, after the
+rebuffs, after the scornful and contumelious slight which M. de Vlaye
+had put upon her, willing still to seek him, willing still to be in
+his power?
+
+It seemed so. Certainly it could not be denied that she was seeking
+him, and that he, her brother, was escorting her. In that light people
+would look upon his action.
+
+The thought stung him, and he halted midway on the woodland track that
+descended the farther side of the hill. His face wore a mixture of
+shame and appeal--with ill-humour underlying both. "See here, Odette,"
+he said abruptly, "I do not see the end of this."
+
+Though she raised her eyebrows contemptuously, a faint tinge of colour
+crept into her face.
+
+"I thought," she replied, "that the end was to save this little fool
+who is too weak to save herself!"
+
+"But you?"
+
+"Oh, for me?" contemptuously. "Take no heed of me. I am of other
+stuff, and can manage my own affairs."
+
+"You think so," he retorted. "But the Captain of Vlaye, he, too, is of
+other stuff."
+
+"Do you fancy I am afraid of M. de Vlaye?" she answered. And her eyes
+flashed scorn on him. "You may be! You should be!" with a glance which
+marked his deformity and stabbed the sense of it deep into his heart.
+"How should you be otherwise, seeing that in no circumstances could
+you be a match for him! But I? I say again that I am of other stuff."
+
+"All the same," he muttered darkly, "I would not go on----"
+
+"Would not go on?" she retorted in mockery. "Not with your sweet
+Countess in danger? Not with the dear light of your eyes in Vlaye's
+arms? Not go on? Oh, brave lover! Oh, brave man! Not go on, and your
+Countess, your pretty Countess----"
+
+"Be silent!" he cried. She stung him to rage.
+
+"Ah! We go back then?"
+
+But he could not face that, he could not say yes to that; and,
+defeated, he turned in dumb sullen anger and resumed the road.
+
+Necessarily the danger of arrest increased as they approached the
+town. The last mile, which brought them to the bridge over the river,
+was traversed under the eyes of the castle; it would not have
+surprised Roger had they been met and stopped long before they came to
+the town gate. But the Captain of Vlaye, it seemed, held the danger
+still remote, and troubled his followers with few precautions. The
+place lay drowsing in the late heat of the summer afternoon. It was
+still as the dead, and though their approach was doubtless seen and
+noted, no one issued forth or challenged them. Even the men who
+lounged in the shade of the low-browed archway--that still bore the
+scutcheon of its ancient lords--contented themselves with a long stare
+and a sulky salute. The bridge passed, a narrow street paved and
+steep, and overhung by ancient houses of brick and timber, opened
+before them. It led upwards in the direction of the castle, but after
+pursuing it in single file some fifty paces, the Abbess turned from it
+into a narrow lane that brought them in a bow-shot--for the town was
+very small--to the wall again. This was their present destination. For
+crowded into an angle of the wall under the shadow of one of the old
+brick watch-towers stood the chapel and cell that owned the lax rule
+of M. de Vlaye's chaplain, Father Benet.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                         THE CASTLE OF VLAYE.
+
+
+Roger had little faith in the priest's power, and less in his
+willingness to aid them. But at worst he was not to be kept in
+suspense. By good luck, Father Benet was walking at the moment of
+their arrival in his potherb garden. As they dismounted, they espied
+the Father peeping at them between the tall sunflowers and budding
+hollyhocks; his ruddy face something dismayed and fallen, and his mien
+that of a portly man caught in the act of wrong-doing. Finding himself
+detected, he came forward with an awkward show of joviality.
+
+"Welcome, sister," he said. "There is naught the matter at the Abbey,
+I trust, that I see you thus late in the day?"
+
+"No, the matter is here," the Abbess replied, with a look in her eyes
+that told him she knew all. "And we are here to see about it. Let us
+in, Father. The time is short, for at any moment your master"--she
+indicated the castle by a gesture--"may hear of our arrival and send
+for us."
+
+"I am sure," the priest answered glibly, "that anything that I can do
+for you, sister----"
+
+She cut him short. "No words, no words, but let us in!" she said
+sharply. And when with pursed lips and a shrug of resignation he had
+complied, and they stood in the cool stone-floored room--communicating
+by an open door with the chapel--in which he received his visitors,
+she came with the same abruptness to the point.
+
+"At what hour are you going up to the castle?" she asked.
+
+He tried to avoid her eyes. "To the castle?" he repeated.
+
+"Ay," she said, watching him keenly. "To the castle. Are there more
+castles than one? Or first, when were you there last, Father?"
+
+His look wandered, full of calculation. "Last?" he said. "When was I
+at the castle last?"
+
+"The truth! The truth!" she cried impatiently.
+
+He chid her, but with a propitiatory smile akin to those which the
+augurs exchanged. "Sister! Sister!" he said. "_Nil nisi verum
+clericus!_ I was there no more than an hour back."
+
+"And got your orders? And got your orders, I suppose?" she repeated
+with rude insistence. "Out with it, Father. I see that you are no more
+easy than I am!"
+
+He flung out his hands in sudden abandonment. "God knows I am not!" he
+said. "God knows I am not! And that is the truth, and I am not hiding
+it. God knows I am not! But what am I to do? He is a violent man--you
+know him!--and I am a man of peace. I must do his will or go. And I am
+better than nothing! I may"--there was a whine in his voice--"I may do
+some good still. You know that, sister. I may do some good. I baptise.
+I bury. But if I go, there is no one."
+
+"And if you go, you are no one," she answered keenly. "For your
+suffragan has you in no good favour, I am told. So that if you go you
+happen on but a sackcloth welcome. So it is said, Father. I know not
+if it be said truly."
+
+"Untruly! Untruly!" he protested earnestly. "He has never found fault
+with me, sister, on good occasion. But I have enemies, all men have
+enemies----"
+
+"You are like to make more," Roger struck in, with a dark look.
+
+The priest wrung his hands. "I know! I know!" he said. "He carries it
+too highly. Too highly! They say that he has caught the King's
+governor now, and has him in keeping there."
+
+"It is true."
+
+"Well, I have warned him; he cannot say I have not!"
+
+"And what said he to your warning?" the Abbess asked with a sneer.
+
+"He threatened me with the stirrup leathers."
+
+"And you are now to marry him?"
+
+He turned a shade paler. "You know it?" he gasped.
+
+"I know it, but not the time," she answered. And as he hesitated,
+silent and appalled, "Come," she continued, "the truth, Father. And
+then I will tell you what I am going to do."
+
+"At sunset," he muttered, "I am to be there."
+
+"Good," she said. "Now we know. Then you will go up an hour earlier.
+And I shall go with you."
+
+He protested feebly. He knew something of that which had gone before,
+something of her history, something of her passion for the Captain of
+Vlaye; and he was sure that she was not bent on good. "I dare not!" he
+said, "I dare not, sister! You ask too much."
+
+"Dare not what?" the Abbess retorted, bending her handsome brows in
+wrath. "Dare not go one hour earlier?"
+
+"But you--you want to go?"
+
+"If I go with you, what is that to you?"
+
+"But----"
+
+"But what, Father, but what?"
+
+"You want something of me?" he faltered. He was not to be deceived.
+"Something dangerous, I know it!"
+
+"I want your company to the door of the room where she lies," the
+Abbess replied. "That is all. You have leave to visit her? Do
+not"--overwhelming him with swift fierce words--"deny it. Do not tell
+me that you have not! Think you I do not know you, Father? Think you
+I do not know how well you are with him, how late you sit with him,
+how deep you drink with him, when he lacks better company? And that
+this--though you are frightened now, and would fain be clear of it,
+knowing who she is--is the thing which you have vowed to do for him a
+hundred times and a hundred times to that, if it would help him!"
+
+"Never! Never!" he protested, paler than before.
+
+"Father," she retorted, stooping forward and speaking low, "be warned.
+Be warned! Get you a foot in the other camp while you may! You are
+over-well fed for the dry crust and the sack bed of the bishop's
+prison! You drink too much red wine to take kindly to the moat puddle!
+And that not for months, but for years and years! Have you not heard
+of men who lay forgotten, ay, forgotten even by their gaoler at last,
+until they starved in the bishop's prison? The bishop's prison,
+Father!" she continued cruelly. "Who comes out thence, but the rats,
+and they fat? Who comes out thence----"
+
+"Don't! Don't!" the priest cried, his complexion mottled, his flabby
+cheeks trembling with fear of the thing which her words called up,
+with fear of the thing that had often kept him quaking in the night
+hours. "You will not do it?"
+
+"I?" she answered drily. "No, not I perhaps. But is a Countess of
+Rochechouart to be abducted so lightly, or so easily? Has she so few
+friends? So poor a kindred? A cousin there is, I think--my lord Bishop
+of Comminges--who has one of those very prisons. And, if I mistake
+not, she has another cousin, who is in Flanders now, but will know
+well how to avenge her when he returns."
+
+"What is it you want me to do?" he faltered.
+
+"Go with me to her door--that I may gain admission. Then, whether you
+go to him or not, your silence, for one half-hour."
+
+"You will not do her any harm?" he muttered.
+
+"Fool, it is to do her good I am here."
+
+"And that is all? You swear it?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+He heaved a deep sigh. "I will do it," he said. He wiped his brow with
+the sleeve of his cassock. "I will do it."
+
+"You are wise," she replied, "and wise in time, Father, for it is time
+we went. The sun is within an hour of setting." Then, turning to
+Roger, who had never ceased to watch the priest as a cat watches a
+mouse, "The horses may wait in the lane or where you please," she
+said. "They are hidden from the castle where they stand, and perhaps
+they are best there. In any case"--with a meaning glance--"I return to
+this spot. Expect me in half an hour. After that, the rest is for you
+to contrive. I wash my hands of it."
+
+The words in which he would have assented stuck in the lad's throat.
+He could not speak. She turned again to the priest. "One moment and I
+am ready," she said. "Have you a mirror?"
+
+"A mirror?" he exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+"But of course you have not," she replied. She looked about her an
+instant, then with a quick step she passed through the doorway into
+the chapel. There her eye had caught a polished sheet of brass,
+recording in monkish Latin the virtues of that member of the old
+family who had founded this "Capella extra muros," as ancient deeds
+style it. She placed herself before the tablet, and paying as little
+heed to her brother or the priest--though they were within sight--as
+to the sacred emblems about her, or the scene in which she stood, she
+cast back her hood, and drew from her robes a small ivory case. From
+this she took a morsel of sponge, and a tiny comb, also of ivory; and
+with water taken from the stoup beside the door, she refreshed her
+face, and carefully recurled the short ringlets upon her forehead.
+With a pencil drawn from the same case, she retouched her eyelashes
+and the corners of her eyes, and with deft fingers she straightened
+and smoothed the small ruff about her neck. Finally, with no less
+care, she drew the hood of her habit close round her face, and after
+turning herself about a time or two before the mirror went back to the
+others. They had not taken their eyes off her.
+
+"Come," she said. And she led the way out without a second word,
+passed by the waiting horses and the servants, and, attended by the
+reluctant Father, walked at a gentle pace along the lane towards the
+main street.
+
+The priest went in fear, his stout legs trembling under him. But until
+the two reached a triangular open space, graced by an Italian
+fountain, and used, though it sloped steeply, for a market site, the
+street they pursued was not exposed to view from the castle. Above the
+marketplace, however, the road turned abruptly to the left, and,
+emerging from the houses, ascended between twin mounds, of which the
+nearer bore the castle, and the other, used on occasion as a
+tilt-yard, was bare. The road ascended the gorge between the two, then
+wound about, this time to the right, and gained the summit of the
+unoccupied breast; whence, leaping its own course by a drawbridge, it
+entered the grey stronghold that on every other side looked down from
+the brow of a precipice--here on the clustering roofs of the town, and
+there, and there again, on the wide green vale and silvery meanders of
+the Dronne.
+
+Looking to the south, where the valley opened into a plain, the eye
+might almost discern Coutras--that famous battlefield that lies on the
+Dronne bank. Northward it encountered the wooded hills beyond which
+lay Villeneuve, and the town of Barbesieux on the great north road,
+and the plain towards Angoulême. Fairer eyrie, or stronger, is scarce
+to be found in the width of three provinces.
+
+Until they came to the market-place the Abbess and her unwilling
+companion had little to fear unless they met M. de Vlaye himself. As
+far as others were concerned, Father Benet's coarse, plump face,
+albeit less ruddy than ordinary, was warrant enough to avert both
+suspicion and inquiry. But thence onwards they walked in full view not
+only of the lounge upon the ramparts which the Captain of Vlaye most
+affected at the cool hour, but of a dozen lofty casements from any one
+of which an officious sentry or a servant might mark their approach
+and pass word of it. Father Benet pursued this path as one under fire.
+The sun was low, but at its midday height it had not burned the stout
+priest more than the fancied fury of those eyes. The sweat poured down
+his face as he climbed and panted and crossed himself in a breath.
+
+"Believe me, you are better here than in the bishop's prison," his
+companion said, to cheer him.
+
+"But he will see us from the ramparts," he groaned, not daring to look
+up and disprove the fact. "He will see us! He will meet us at the
+gate."
+
+"Then it will be my affair," the Abbess answered.
+
+"We are mad--stark, staring mad!" he protested.
+
+"You were madder to go back," she said.
+
+He looked at her viciously, as if he wished her dead. Fortunately they
+had reached the narrow defile under the bridge, and a feverish longing
+to come to an end of the venture took place of all other feelings in
+the priest's breast. Doggedly he panted up the Tilt Mound, as it was
+called, and passed three or four groups of troopers, who were taking
+the air on their backs or playing at games of chance. Thence they
+crossed the drawbridge. The iron-studded doors, with their clumsy
+grilles, above which the arms of the old family still showed their
+quarterings, stood open; but in the depths of the low-browed archway,
+where the shadows were beginning to gather, lounged a dozen rogues
+whose insolent eyes the Abbess must confront.
+
+But she judged, and rightly, that the priest's company would make that
+easy which she could not have compassed so well alone, though she
+might have won entrance. The men, indeed, were surprised to see her,
+and stared; some recognised her with respect, others with grins
+half-knowing, half-insolent. But no one stepped forward or volunteered
+to challenge her entrance. And although a wit, as soon as her back was
+turned, hummed
+
+
+                    "Je suis amoureuse,
+                     Malheureuse,
+                     J'ai perdu mon galant!"
+
+
+and another muttered, "Oh, la, la, the bridesmaid!" with a wink at his
+fellows, they were soon clear of the gate and the starers, and
+crossing the wide paved court, that, bathed in quiet light, was
+pervaded none the less by an air of subdued expectation. Here a man
+cleaned a horse or his harness, there a group chatted on the curb of
+the well; here a white-capped cook showed himself, and there, beside
+the entrance, a couple teased the brown bear that inhabited the stone
+kennel, and on high days made sport for the Captain of Vlaye's dogs.
+
+Vlaye's quarters and those of his household and officers lay in the
+wing on the left, which overlooked the town; his men were barracked
+and the horses stabled in the opposite wing. The fourth side, facing
+the entrance, was open, but was occupied by a garden raised two steps
+above the court and separated from it, first by a tall railing of
+curiously wrought iron, and secondly by a row of clipped limes, whose
+level wall of foliage hid the pleasaunce from the come-and-go of the
+vulgar.
+
+The Abbess knew the place intimately, and she felt no surprise when
+the Father, in place of making for the common doorway on the left,
+which led into M. de Vlaye's wing, bore across the open to the
+floriated iron gates of the garden. He passed through these and turned
+to the left along the cool green lime walk, which was still musical
+with the hum of belated bees.
+
+"She is in the demoiselles' wing then?" the Abbess murmured. She had
+occupied those rooms herself on more than one occasion. They opened by
+a door on the garden and enjoyed a fair and airy outlook over the
+Dronne. As she recalled them and the memories they summoned up her
+features worked.
+
+"Where else should she be--short of this evening?" Father Benet
+answered, with full knowledge of the sting he inflicted. Her secret
+was no secret from him. "But I need come no farther," he added,
+pausing awkwardly.
+
+"To the door," she answered firmly. "To the door! That is the
+bargain."
+
+"Well, we are there," he said, halting when he had taken another dozen
+paces, which brought them to the door in the garden end of the left
+wing. "Now, I will retire by your leave, sister."
+
+"Knock!"
+
+He complied with a faltering hand, and the moment he had done so he
+turned to flee, as if the sound terrified him. But with an unexpected
+movement she seized his wrist in her strong grasp, and though he
+stammered a remonstrance, and even resisted her weakly, she held him
+until the opening door surprised them.
+
+A grim-faced woman looked out at them. "To see the Countess," the
+Abbess muttered. Then to the priest, as she released him, "I shall not
+be more than ten minutes, Father," she continued. "You will wait for
+me, perhaps. Until then!"
+
+She nodded to him after a careless, easy fashion, and the door closed
+on her. In the half-light of the passage within, which faded tapestry
+and a stand of arms relieved from utter bareness, the woman who had
+admitted her faced her sourly. "You have my lord's leave?" she asked
+suspiciously.
+
+"Should I be here without it?" the Abbess retorted in her proudest
+manner. "Be speedy, and let me to her. My lord will not be best
+pleased if the priest be kept waiting."
+
+"No great matter that," the woman muttered rebelliously. But having
+said it she led the visitor up the stairs and ushered her into the
+well-remembered room. It was a spacious, pleasant chamber, with a view
+of the garden, and beyond the garden of the widening valley spread far
+beneath. Nothing of the prison-house hung about it, nor was it bare or
+coldly furnished.
+
+The woman did not enter with her, but the gain was not much. For the
+Abbess had no sooner crossed the threshold than she discovered a
+second gaoler. This was a young waiting-woman, who, perched on a stool
+within the door, sat eyeing her prisoner with something of pity and
+more of ill-humour. The little Countess, indeed, was a pitiful sight.
+She lay, half-crouching, half-huddled together, in the recess of the
+farther window, on the seat of which she hid her face in the
+abandonment of despair. Her loosened hair flowed dishevelled upon her
+neck and shoulders; and from minute to minute a dry, painful sob--for
+she was not weeping--shook the poor child from head to foot.
+
+The Abbess, after one keen glance, which took in every particular,
+from the waiting-woman's expression to the attitude of the captive,
+nodded to the attendant. Then for a moment she did not speak. At last,
+"She takes it ill?" she muttered under her breath.
+
+The other slightly shrugged her shoulders. "She has been like that
+since he left her," she whispered. Whether the words and the movement
+expressed more pity, or more contempt, or more envy, it was hard to
+determine; for all seemed to meet in them. "She could not take it
+worse."
+
+"I am here to mend that," the Abbess rejoined. And she moved a short
+way into the room. But there she came to a stand. Her eyes had fallen
+on a pile of laces and dainty fabrics arranged upon one of the seats
+of the nearer window. Her face underwent a sudden change; she seemed
+about to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. At last "Those are
+for her?" she said.
+
+"Ay, but God knows how I am to get them on," the girl answered in a
+low tone. "She is such a baby! But there it is! Whatever she is now,
+she'll be mistress to-morrow, and I--I am loath to use force."
+
+"I will contrive it," the Abbess replied, a light in her averted eyes.
+"Do you leave us. Come back in a quarter of an hour, and if I have
+succeeded take no notice. Take no heed, do you hear," she continued,
+turning to the girl, "if you find her dressed. Say nothing to her, but
+let her be until she is sent for."
+
+"I am only too glad to let her be."
+
+"That is enough," the Abbess rejoined sternly. "You can go now.
+Already the time is short for what I have to do."
+
+"You will find it too short, my lady, unless I am mistaken," the
+waiting-woman answered under her breath. But she went. She was glad to
+escape; glad to get rid of the difficulty. And she went without
+suspicion. How the other came to be there, or how her interest lay in
+arraying this child for a marriage with her lover--these were
+questions which the girl proposed to put to her gossips at a proper
+opportunity; for they were puzzling questions. But that the Abbess was
+there without leave--the Abbess who not a month before had been
+frequently in Vlaye's company, hawking and hunting, and even
+supping--to the scandal of the convent, albeit no strait-laced one nor
+unwont to make allowance for its noble mistresses--that the Abbess was
+there without the knowledge of her master she never suspected. It
+never for an instant entered the woman's mind.
+
+Meanwhile Odette, the moment the door closed on the other, took
+action. Before the latch ceased to rattle her hand was on the
+Countess's shoulder, her voice was in her ear. "Up, girl, if you wish
+to be saved!" she hissed. "Up, and not a word!"
+
+The Countess sprang up--startled simultaneously by hand and voice. But
+once on her feet she recoiled. She stood breathing hard, her hands
+raised to ward the other off. "You?" she cried. "You here?" And
+shaking her head as if she thought she dreamed, she retreated another
+step. Her distrust of the Abbess was apparent in every line of her
+figure.
+
+"Yes, it is I," Odette answered roughly. "It is I."
+
+"But why? Why are you here? Why you?"
+
+"To save you, girl," the Abbess answered. "To save you--do you hear?
+But every moment is of value. Hold your tongue, ask no questions, do
+as I tell you, and all may be well. Hesitate, and it will be too late.
+See, the sun still shines on the head of that tall tree! Before it
+leaves that tree you must be away from here. Is it true that he weds
+you to-night?"
+
+The other uttered a cry of despair. "And for naught!" she said. "Do
+you understand, for naught! He has not let him go! He lied to us! He
+has not released him! He holds me, but he will not release him."
+
+"And he will not!" the Abbess replied, with something like a jeer.
+"So, if you would not give all for naught, listen to me! Put some
+wrapping about your shoulders, and a kerchief on your head to heighten
+you, and over these my robes and hood. And be speedy! On your feet
+these"--with a rapid movement she drew from some hiding-place in her
+garments a pair of thick-soled shoes. "Hold yourself up, be bold, and
+you may pass out in my place."
+
+"In your place?" the girl stammered, staring in astonishment.
+
+The Abbess had scant patience with her rival's obtuseness. "That is
+what I said," she replied, with a look that was not pleasant in her
+eyes.
+
+The Countess saw the look, and, fearful and doubting, hung back. She
+could not yet grasp the position. "But you!" she murmured. "What of
+you?"
+
+"What is that to you?"
+
+"But----"
+
+"Fear nothing for me!" the Abbess cried vehemently. "Think only of
+yourself! Think only of your own safety. I"--with scorn--"am no weak
+thing to suffer and make no cry. I can take care of myself. But,
+there"--impatiently--"we have lost five minutes! Are you going to do
+this or not? Are you going to stay here, or are you going to escape?"
+
+"Oh, escape! Escape, if it be possible!" the Countess answered,
+shuddering. "Anywhere, from him!"
+
+"You are certain?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes! But it is not possible! He is too clever."
+
+"We will see if that be so," the Abbess answered, smiling grimly. And
+taking the matter into her own hands, she began to strip off her robe
+and hood.
+
+That decided the girl. Gladly would she have learned how the other
+came to be there, and why and to what she trusted. Gladly would she
+have asked other things. But the prospect of escape--of escape from a
+fate which she dreaded the more the nearer she saw it--took reality in
+view of the Abbess's actions. And she, too, began. Escape? Was it
+possible? Was it possible to escape? With shaking fingers she snatched
+up a short cloak, and wrapped it about her shoulders and figure, tying
+it this way and that. She made in the same way a turban of a kerchief,
+and stood ready to clothe herself. By this time the Abbess's outer
+garments lay on the floor, and in three or four minutes the travesty,
+as far as the younger woman was concerned, was effected.
+
+Meantime, while they both wrought, and especially while the Countess,
+stooping, stuffed the large shoes and fitted them and buckled them on,
+the Abbess never ceased explaining the remainder of the plan.
+
+"Go down the stairs," she said, "and if you have to speak mutter but a
+word. Outside the door, turn to the right until you come to the gate
+in the iron railing. Pass through it, cross the court, and go out
+through the great gate, speaking to no one. Then follow the road,
+which makes a loop to the left and passes under itself. Descend by it
+to the market-place, and then to the right until you see the town gate
+fifty paces before you. At that point take the lane on the left, and a
+score of yards will show you the horses waiting for you, and with them
+a friend. You understand? Then I will repeat it."
+
+And she did so from point to point in such a way and so clearly that
+the other, distracted as she was, could not but learn the lesson.
+
+"And now," the Abbess said, when all was told, "give me something
+to put on." Her beautiful arms and shoulders were bare.
+"Something--anything," she continued, looking about her impatiently.
+"Only be quick! Be quick, girl!"
+
+"There is only this," the Countess answered, producing her heavy
+riding-cloak. "Unless"--doubtfully--"you will put on those." She
+indicated the little pile of wedding-clothes, of dainty silk and lace
+and lawn, that lay upon the window-seat.
+
+"Those!" the Abbess exclaimed. And she looked at the pile as at a
+snake. "No, not those! Not those! Why do you want me to put on those?
+Why should I?" with a suspicious look at the other's face.
+
+"If you will not----"
+
+"Will not?"--violently. "No, I will not. And why do you ask me? But I
+prate as badly as you, and we lose time. Are you ready now? Let me
+look at you." And feverishly, while she kicked off her own shoes
+and donned the riding-cloak and drew its hood over her head, she
+turned the Countess about to assure herself that the disguise was
+tolerable--in a bad light.
+
+Then, "You will do," she said roughly, and she pushed the girl from
+her. "Go now. You know what you have to do."
+
+"But you?" the little Countess ventured. Words of gratitude were
+trembling on her lips; there were tears in her eyes. "You--what will
+you do?"
+
+"You need not trouble about me," the Abbess retorted. "Play your part
+well; that is all I ask."
+
+"At least," the Countess faltered, "let me thank you." She would have
+flung her arms round the other's neck.
+
+But the Abbess backed from her. "Go, silly fool!" she cried savagely,
+"unless, after all, you repent and want to keep him."
+
+The insult gave the needed fillip to the other's courage. She turned
+on her heel, opened the door with a firm hand, and, closing it behind
+her, descended the stairs. The waiting-maid and the grim-faced woman
+were talking in the passage, but they ceased their gossip on her
+appearance, and turned their eyes on her. Fortunately the place was
+ill-lit and full of shadows, and the Countess had the presence of mind
+to go steadily down to them without word or sign.
+
+"I hope mademoiselle has succeeded," the waiting-woman murmured
+respectfully. "It is not a business I favour, I am sure."
+
+The Countess shrugged her shoulders--despair giving her courage--and
+the grim-faced woman moved to the door, unlocked it, and held it wide.
+The escaping one acknowledged the act by a slight nod, and, passing
+out, she turned to the right. She walked, giddily and uncertainly, to
+the open gate in the railing, and then, with some difficulty--for the
+shoes were too large for her--she descended the two steps to the
+court. She began to cross the open, and a man here and there, raising
+his head from his occupation, turned to watch her.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                        A NIGHT BY THE RIVER.
+
+
+The Countess knew that her knees were shaking under her. The gaze,
+too, of the men who watched was dreadful to her. She felt her feet
+slipping from the shoes; she felt the kerchief, that, twined in her
+hair, gave her height, shift with the movement; she felt her limbs
+yielding. And she despaired. She was certain that she could not pass;
+she must faint, she must fall. Then the scornful words of the woman
+she had left recurred to her, stung her, whipped her courage once
+more; and, before she was aware of it, she had reached the gateway.
+She was conscious of a crowd of men about her, of all eyes fixed on
+her, of a jeering voice that hummed:
+
+
+                    "Amoureuse,
+                     Malheureuse,
+                     J'ai perdu mon gallant!"
+
+
+and--and then she was beyond the gate! The cool air blowing in the
+gorge between the two breasts fanned her burning cheeks--never breeze
+more blessed!--and with hope, courage, confidence all in a moment
+revived and active, she began to descend the winding road that led to
+the town.
+
+There were men lounging on the road, singly or in groups, who stared
+at her as she passed; some with thinly-veiled insolence, others in
+pure curiosity. But they did not dare to address her; though they
+thought, looking after her, that she bore herself oddly. And she came
+unmolested to the spot where the road passed under the drawbridge.
+Here for an instant sick fear shook her anew. Some of the men in the
+gateway had come out to watch her pass below; she thought that they
+came to call her back. But save for a muttered jeer and the voice of
+the jester repeating slyly:
+
+
+                    "Malheureuse,
+                     Amoureuse,
+                     A perdu son gallant!"
+
+
+no one spoke; and as pace by pace her feet carried her from them,
+carried her farther and farther, her courage returned, she breathed
+again. She came at the foot of the descent, to the carved stone
+fountain and the sloping market-place. She took, as ordered, the road
+that fell away to the right, and in a twinkling she was hidden by the
+turn from the purview of the castle.
+
+She ventured then--the town seemed to stifle her--to move more
+quickly; as quickly as her clumsy shoes would let her move on stones
+sloping and greasy. Here and there a person, struck by something in
+her walk, turned to take a second glance at her; or a woman in a low
+doorway bent curious eyes on her as she came and went. She could not
+tell whether she bred suspicion in them or not, or whether she seemed
+the same woman--but a trifle downcast--who had passed that way before.
+For she dared not look back nor return their gaze. Her heart beat
+quickly, and more quickly as the end drew near. Success that seemed
+within her grasp impelled her at last almost to a run. And then--she
+was round the corner in the side lane that had been indicated to her,
+and she saw before her the horses and the men gathered before the
+chapel gate. And Roger--yes, Roger himself, with a face that worked
+strangely and words that joy stifled in his throat, was leading her to
+a horse and lending his knee to mount her. And they were turning, and
+moving back again into the street.
+
+"There is only the gate now," he muttered, "only the gate! Courage,
+mademoiselle! Be steady!"
+
+And the gate proved no hindrance. Though not one moment of all she had
+passed was more poignant, more full of choking fear, than that which
+saw them move slowly through, under the gaze of the men on guard, who
+seemed for just one second to be rising to question them. Then--the
+open country! The open country with its air, its cool breezes, its
+spacious evening light and its promise of safety. And quick on this
+followed the delicious moment when they began to trot, slowly at first
+and carelessly, that suspicion might not be awakened; and then more
+swiftly, and more swiftly, urging the horses with sly kicks and
+disguised spurrings until the first wood that hid them saw them
+pounding forward at a gallop, with the Countess's robe flapping in the
+wind, her kerchief fallen, her hair loosened. Two miles, three miles
+flew by them; they topped the wooded hill that looked down on
+Villeneuve. Then, midway in the descent on the farther side, they left
+the path at a word from Roger, plunged into the scrub and rode at
+risk--for it was dark--along a deer-trail with which he was familiar.
+This brought them presently, by many windings and through thick brush,
+to a spot where the brook was fordable. Thence, in silence, they
+plodded and waded and jogged along damp woodland ways and through
+watery lanes that attended the brook to its junction with the river.
+
+Here, at length, in the lowest bottom of the Villeneuve valley, they
+halted. For the time they deemed themselves safe; since night had
+fallen and hidden their tracks, and Vlaye, if he followed, would take
+the ordinary road. It had grown so dark indeed, that until the moon
+rose farther retreat was impossible; and though the river beside which
+they stood was fordable at the cost of a wetting, Roger thought it
+better to put off the attempt. One of the servants, the man at the
+Countess's bridle, would have had him try now, and rest in the
+increased security of the farther bank. But Roger demurred, for a
+reason which he did not explain; and the party dismounted where they
+were, in a darkness which scarcely permitted the hand to be seen
+before the face.
+
+"The moon will be up in three hours," Roger said. "If we cannot flee
+they cannot pursue. Mademoiselle," he continued, in a voice into which
+he strove to throw a certain aloofness, "if you will give me your
+hand," he felt for it, "there is a dry spot here. I will break down
+these saplings and put a cloak over them, and you may get some sleep.
+You will need it, for the moment the moon is up we must ride on."
+
+The snapping of alder boughs announced that he was preparing her
+resting-place. She felt for the spot, but timidly, and he had to take
+her hand again and place her in it.
+
+"I fear it is rough," he said, "but it is the best we can do. For
+food, alas, we have none."
+
+"I want none," she answered. And then hurriedly, "You are not going?"
+
+"Only a few yards."
+
+"Stay, if you please. I am frightened."
+
+"Be sure I will," he answered. "But we are in little danger here."
+
+He made a seat for himself not far from her, and he sat down. And if
+she was frightened he was happy, though he could not see her. He was
+in that stage of love when no familiarity has brought the idol too
+near, no mark of favour has declared her human, no sign of preference
+has fostered hope. He had done her, he was doing her a service; and
+all his life it would be his to recall her as he had seen her during
+their flight--battered, blown about, with streaming hair and draggled
+clothes, the branches whipping colour into her cheeks, her small brown
+hand struggling with her tangled locks. In such a stage of love to be
+near is enough, and Roger asked no more. He forgot his sister's
+position, he forgot des Ageaux' danger. Listening in the warm summer
+night to the croaking of the frogs, he gazed unrebuked into the
+darkness that held her, and he was content.
+
+Not that he had hope of her, or even in fancy thought of her as his.
+But this moment was his, and while he lived he would possess the
+recollection of it. All his life he would think of her, as the monk in
+the cloister bears with him the image of her he loved in the world; or
+as the maid remembers blamelessly the lover who died between betrothal
+and wedding, and before one wry word or one divided thought had risen
+to dim the fair mirror of her future.
+
+Alas, of all the dainty things in the world, too delicate in their
+nature to be twice tasted, none is more evanescent than this first
+worship; this reverence of the lover for her who seems rather angel
+than woman, framed of a clay too heavenly for the coarse touch of
+passion.
+
+Once before, in the hay-field, he had tried to save her, and he had
+failed. This time--oh, he was happy when he thought of it--he would
+save her. And he fell into a dream of a life--impossible in those
+days, however it might have been in the times of Amadis of Gaul, or
+Palmerin of England--devoted secretly to her service and her
+happiness; a beautiful, melancholy dream of unrequited devotion,
+attuned to the solemnity of the woodland night with its vast spaces,
+its mysterious rustlings and gurgling waters. Those who knew Roger
+best, and best appreciated his loyal nature, would have deemed him
+sleepless for the Lieutenant's sake--whose life hung in the balance;
+or tormented by thoughts of the Abbess's position. But love is of all
+things the most selfish; and though Roger ground his teeth once and
+again as Vlaye's breach of faith occurred to him, his thoughts were
+quickly plunged anew in a sweet reverie, in which she had part. The
+wind blew from her to him, and he fancied that some faint scent from
+her loosened hair, some perfume of her clothing came to him.
+
+It was her voice that at last and abruptly dragged him from his dream.
+"Are you not ashamed of me?" she whispered.
+
+"Ashamed?" he cried, leaping in his seat.
+
+"Once--twice, I have failed," she went on, her voice trembling a
+little. "Always some one must take my place. Bonne first, and now your
+other sister! I am a coward, Monsieur Roger. A coward!"
+
+"No!" he said firmly. "No!"
+
+"Yes, a coward. But you do not know," she continued in the tone of one
+who pleaded, "how lonely I have been, and what I have suffered. I have
+been tossed from hand to hand all my life, and mocked with great names
+and great titles, and been with them all a puppet, a thing my family
+valued because they could barter it away when the price was good--just
+as they could a farm or a manor! I give orders, and sometimes they are
+carried out, and sometimes not--as it suits," bitterly. "I am shown on
+high days as Madonnas are shown, carried shoulder high through the
+streets. And I am as far from everybody, as lonely, as friendless,"
+her voice broke a little, "as they! What wonder if I am a coward?"
+
+"You are tired," Roger answered, striving to control his voice,
+striving also to control a mad desire to throw himself at her feet and
+comfort her. "You will feel differently to-morrow. You have had no
+food, mademoiselle."
+
+"You too?" in a voice of reproach.
+
+He did not understand her, and though he trembled he was silent.
+
+"You too treat me as a child," she continued. "You talk as if food
+made up for friends and no one was lonely save when alone! Think what
+it must be to be always alone, in a crowd! Bargained for by one,
+snatched at by another, fawned on by a third, a prize for the boldest!
+And not one--not one thinking of me!" pathetically. And then, as he
+rose, "What is it?"
+
+"I think I hear some one moving," Roger faltered. "I will tell the
+men!" And without waiting for her answer, he stumbled away. For, in
+truth, he could listen no longer. If he listened longer, if he stayed,
+he must speak! And she was a child, she did not know. She did not know
+that she was tempting him, trying him, putting him to a test beyond
+his strength. He stumbled away into the darkness, and steering for the
+place where the horses were tethered he called the men by name.
+
+One answered sleepily that all was well. The other, who was resting,
+snored. Roger, his face on fire, hesitated, not knowing what to do. To
+bid the man who watched come nearer and keep the lady company would be
+absurd, would be out of reason; and so it would be to bid him stand
+guard over them while they talked. The man would think him mad. The
+only alternative, if he would remove himself from temptation, was to
+remain at a distance from her. And this he must do.
+
+He found, therefore, a seat a score of paces away, and he sat down,
+his head between his hands. But his heart cried--cried pitifully that
+he was losing moments that would never recur--moments on which he
+would look back all his life with regret. And besides his heart,
+other things spoke to him; the warm stillness of the summer night,
+the low murmur of the water at his feet, the whispering breeze, the
+wood-nymphs--ay, and the old song that recurred to his memory and
+mocked him--
+
+
+             "Je ris de moi, je ris de toi,
+              Je ris de ta sottise!"
+
+
+Here, indeed, was his opportunity, here was such a chance as few men
+had, and no man would let slip. But he was not as other men--there it
+was. He was crook-backed, poor, unknown! And so thinking, so telling
+himself, he fixed himself in his resolve, he strove to harden his
+heart, he covered his ears with his hands. For she was a child, a
+child! She did not understand!
+
+He would have played the hero perfectly but for one fatal thought that
+presently came to him--a thought fatal to his rectitude. She would
+take fright! Left alone, ignorant of the feeling that drove him from
+her--what if she moved from the place where he had left her, and lost
+herself in the wood, or fell into the river, or--and just then she
+called him.
+
+"Monsieur Roger! Where are you?"
+
+He went back to her slowly, almost sullenly; partly in surrender to
+his own impulse, partly in response to her call. But he did not again
+sit down beside her. "Yes," he said. "You are quite safe,
+mademoiselle. I shall not be out of earshot. You are quite safe."
+
+"Why did you go away?"
+
+"Away?" he faltered.
+
+"Are you afraid of me?" gently.
+
+"Afraid of you?" He tried to speak gaily.
+
+"Pray," she said in a queer, stiff tone, "do not repeat all my words.
+I asked if you were afraid of me, Monsieur Roger?"
+
+"No," he faltered, "but--but I thought that you would rather be
+alone."
+
+"I?" in a tone that went to poor Roger's heart. "I, who have told you
+that I am always alone? Who have told you that I have not"--her voice
+shook--"a friend--one real friend in the world!"
+
+"You are tired now," Roger faltered, finding no other words than those
+he had used before.
+
+"Not one real friend!" she repeated piteously. "Not one!"
+
+He was not proof against that. He bent towards her in the
+darkness--almost in spite of himself. "Yes, one," he said, in a voice
+as unsteady as hers. "One you have, mademoiselle, who would die for
+you and ask not a look in return! Who would set, and will ever set,
+your honour and your happiness above the prizes of the world! Who asks
+only to serve you at a distance, by day and dark, now and always! If
+it be a comfort for you to know that you have a friend, know it!
+Know----"
+
+"I do not know," she struck in, in a voice both incredulous and
+ironical, "where I am to find such an one save in books! In the Seven
+Champions or in Amadis of Gaul--perhaps. But in the world--where?"
+
+He was silent. He had said too much already. Too much, too much!
+
+"Where?" she repeated.
+
+Still he did not answer.
+
+Then, "Do you mean yourself, Monsieur Roger?"
+
+She spoke with a certain keenness of tone that was near to, ay, that
+threatened offence.
+
+He stood, his hands hanging by his side. "Yes," he faltered. "But no
+one knows better than myself that I cannot help you, mademoiselle.
+That I can be no honour to you. For the Countess of Rochechouart to
+have a crook-backed knight at the tail of her train--it may make some
+laugh. It may make women laugh. Yet----" he paused on the word.
+
+"Yet what, sir?"
+
+"While he rides there," poor Roger whispered, "no man shall laugh."
+
+She was silent quite a long time, as if she had not heard him. Then,
+
+"Do you not know," she said, "that the Countess of Rochechouart can
+have but one friend--her husband?"
+
+He winced. She was right; but if that was her feeling, why had she
+complained of the lack of friends?
+
+"Only one friend, her husband," the Countess continued softly. "If you
+would be that friend--but perhaps you would not, Roger? Still, if you
+would, I say, you must be kind to her ever and gentle to her. You must
+not leave her alone in woods on dark nights. You must not slight her.
+You must not,"--she was half laughing, half crying, and hanging
+towards him in the darkness, her childish hands held out in a gesture
+of appeal, irresistible had he seen it--but it was dark, or she had
+not dared--"you must not make anything too hard for her!"
+
+He stepped one pace from her, shaking.
+
+"I dare not! I dare not!" he said.
+
+"Not if I dare?" she retorted gently. "Not if I dare, who am a coward?
+Are you a coward, too, that when you have said so much and I have said
+so much you will still leave me alone and unprotected, and--and
+friendless? Or is it that you do not love me?"
+
+"Not love you?" Roger cried, in a tone that betrayed more than a
+volume of words had told. And beaten out of his last defence by that
+shrewd dilemma, he threw his pride to the winds; he sank down beside
+her, and seized her hands and carried them to his lips--lips that were
+hot with the fever of sudden passion. "Not love you, mademoiselle? Not
+love you?"
+
+"So eloquent!" she murmured, with a last flicker of irony. "He does
+not even now say that he loves me. It is still his friendship, I
+suppose, that he offers me."
+
+"Mademoiselle!"
+
+"Or is it that you think me a nun because I wear this dress?"
+
+He convinced her by means more eloquent than all the words lovers'
+lips have framed that he did not so think her; that she was the heart
+of his heart, the desire of his desire. Not that she needed to be
+convinced. For when the delirium of his joy began to subside he
+ventured to put a certain question to her--that question which happy
+lovers never fail to put.
+
+"Do you think women are blind?" she answered. "Did you think I did not
+see your big eyes following me in and out and up and down? That I did
+not see your blush when I spoke to you and your black brow when I
+walked with M. des Ageaux? Dear Roger, women are not so blind! I was
+not so blind that I did not know as much before you spoke as I know
+now."
+
+And in the dark of the wood they talked, while the water glinted
+slowly by them and the frogs croaked among the waving weeds, and in
+the stillness under the trees the warmth of the summer night and of
+love wrapped them round. It was an hour between danger and danger,
+made more precious by uncertainty. For the moment the world held for
+each of them but one other person. The Lieutenant's peril, Bonne's
+suspense, the Abbess--all were forgotten until the moon rose above the
+trees and flung a chequered light on the dark moss and hart's-tongue
+and harebells about the lovers' feet. And with a shock of
+self-reproach the two rose to their feet.
+
+They gave to inaction not a moment after that. With difficulty and
+some danger the river was forded by the pale light, and they resumed
+their journey by devious ways until, mounting from the lower ground
+that fringed the water, they gained the flank of the hills. Thence,
+crossing one shoulder after another by paths known to Roger, they
+reached the hill at the rear of the Old Crocans' town. In passing by
+this and traversing the immediate neighbourhood of the peasants' camp
+lay their greatest danger. But the dawn was now at hand, the moon was
+fading; and in the cold, grey interval between dawn and daylight they
+slipped by within sight of the squalid walls, and with the fear of
+surprise on them approached the gate of the camp. Nor, though all went
+well with them, did they breathe freely until the challenge of the
+guard at the gate rang in their ears.
+
+After that there came with safety the sense of their selfishness. They
+thought of poor Bonne, who, somewhere in the mist-wrapped basin before
+them, lay waiting and listening and praying. How were they to face
+her? with what heart tell her that her lover, that des Ageaux, still
+lay in his enemy's power. True, Vlaye had gone back on his word, and,
+in face of the Countess's surrender, had refused to release him; so
+that they were not to blame. But would Bonne believe this? Would she
+not rather set down the failure to the Countess's faint heart, to the
+Countess's withdrawal?
+
+"I should not have come!" the girl cried, turning to Roger in great
+distress. "I should not have come!" Her new happiness fell from her
+like a garment, and, shivering, she hung back in the entrance and
+wrung her hands. "I dare not face her!" she said. "I dare not,
+indeed!" And, "Wait!" to the men who wished to hurry off and proclaim
+their return. "Wait!" she said imperatively.
+
+The grey fog of the early morning, which had sheltered their approach
+and still veiled the lower parts of the camp, seemed to add to the
+hopelessness of the news they bore. Roger himself was silent, looking
+at the waiting men, and wondering what must be done. Poor Bonne! He
+had scarcely thought of her--yet what must she be feeling? What had he
+himself felt a few hours before?
+
+"Some one must tell her," he said presently. "If you will not----"
+
+"I will! I will!" she answered, her lip beginning to tremble.
+
+Roger hesitated. "Perhaps she is sleeping," he said; "and then it were
+a pity to rouse her."
+
+But the Countess shook her head in scorn of his ignorance. Bonne would
+not be sleeping. Sleeping, when her lover had not returned! Sleeping,
+at this hour of all hours, the hour M. de Vlaye had fixed for--for the
+end! Sleeping, when at any moment news, the best or the worst, might
+come!
+
+And Bonne was not sleeping. The words had scarcely passed Roger's lips
+when she appeared, gliding out of the mist towards them, the Bat's
+lank form at her elbow. Their appearance in company was, in truth, no
+work of chance. Six or seven times already, braving the dark camp and
+its possible dangers, she had gone to the entrance to inquire; and on
+each occasion--so strong is a common affection--the Bat had appeared
+as it were from the ground, and gone silently with her, learned in
+silence that there was no news, and seen her in silence to her
+quarters again. The previous afternoon she had got some rest. She had
+lain some hours in the deep sleep of exhaustion; and longer in a heavy
+doze, conscious of the dead weight of anxiety, yet resting in body.
+
+Save for this she had not had strength both to bear and watch. As it
+was, deep shadows under her eyes told of the strain she was enduring;
+and her face, though it had not lost its girlish contours, was white
+and woeful. When she saw them standing together in the entrance a
+glance told her that they bore ill news. Yet, to Roger's great
+astonishment, she was quite calm.
+
+"He has not released him?" she said, a flicker of pain distorting her
+face.
+
+The Countess clasped her hand in both her own, and with tears running
+down her face shook her head.
+
+"He is not dead?"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Tell me."
+
+And they told her. "When I said 'You will release him?'" the Countess
+explained, speaking with difficulty, "he--he--laughed. 'I did not
+promise to release him,' he answered. 'I said if you did not accept my
+hospitality, I should hang him!' That was all."
+
+"And now?" Bonne murmured. A pang once more flickered in her eyes.
+"What of him now?"
+
+"I think," Roger said, "there is a hope. I do indeed."
+
+Bonne stood a moment silent. Then, in a voice so steady that it
+surprised even the Bat, who had experience of her courage, "There is a
+hope," she said, "if it be not too late. M. de Joyeuse, whose father's
+life he would have saved--I will go to him! I will kneel to him! He
+must save him. There must still be ways of saving him, and the Duke's
+power is great." She turned to the Bat. "Take me to him," she said.
+
+He stooped his rugged beard to her hand, and kissed it with reverence.
+Then, while the others stood astonished at her firmness, he passed
+with her into the mist in the direction of the Duke's hut.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII
+
+                           THE BRIDE'S DOT.
+
+
+The Abbess left alone in the garden-chamber listened intently; looking
+now on the door which had closed on her rival, now on the windows,
+whence it was just possible that she might catch the flutter of the
+girl's flying skirts. But she did not move to the windows, nor make
+any attempt to look down. She knew that her ears were her best
+sentinels; and motionless, scarcely breathing, in the middle of the
+floor, she strained them to the utmost to catch the first sounds of
+discovery and alarm.
+
+None reached her, and after the lapse of a minute she breathed more
+freely. On the other hand, the waiting-maid--glad to prolong her
+freedom--did not return. The Abbess, still listening, still intent,
+fell to considering, without moving from the spot, other things. The
+light was beginning to wane in the room--the room she remembered so
+well--the corners were growing shadowy. All things promised to favour
+and prolong her disguise. Between the inset windows lay a block of
+deep gloom; she had only to fling herself down in that place and hide
+her face on her arms, as the Countess, in her abandonment, had hidden
+hers, and the woman would discover nothing when she entered--nothing
+until she took courage to disturb the bride--and would dress her.
+
+The bride? Even in the last minute the room had grown darker--dark and
+vague as her sombre thoughts. But it happened that amid its shadows
+one object still gleamed white--a tiny oasis of brightness in a desert
+of gloom. The pile of dainty bride-clothes, lawn and lace, that lay on
+the window-seat caught and gave back what light there was. It seemed
+to concentrate on itself all that remained of the day. Presently she
+could not take her eyes from the things. They had at first repelled
+her. Now, and more powerfully, they fascinated her. She dreamed, with
+her gaze fixed on them; and slowly the colour mounted to her brow,
+her face softened, her breast heaved. She took a step towards the
+bride-clothes and the window, paused, hesitated; and, flushed and
+frowning, looked at the door.
+
+But no one moved outside, no footstep threatened entrance; and
+her eyes returned to the lace and lawn, emblems of a thing that
+from Eve's day to ours has stirred women's hearts. She was not
+over-superstitious. But it could not be for nothing, a voice whispered
+her it could not be for nothing that the things lay there and, while
+night swallowed all besides, still shone resplendent in the gloaming.
+Were they not only an emblem, but a token? A sign to her, a finger
+pointing through the vagueness of her future to the clear path of
+safety?
+
+The Abbess had thought of that path, that way out of her difficulties,
+not once only, nor twice. It had lain too open, too plain to be
+missed. But she had marked it only to shrink from it as too dangerous,
+too bold even for her. Were she to take it she must come into fatal
+collision, into irremediable relations with the man whom she loved;
+but whom others feared, and of whom his little world stood in an awe
+so dire and so significant.
+
+Yet still the things beckoned her; and omens in those days went for
+more than in these. Things still done in sport or out of a sentimental
+affection for the past--on All-hallows' E'en or at the new moon--were
+then done seriously, their lessons taken to heart, their dictates
+followed. The Abbess felt her heart beat high. She trembled and shook
+on the verge of a great resolve.
+
+Had she time? The cloak slipped a little lower, discovering her bare
+shoulders. She looked at the door and listened, looked again at the
+pale bride-clothes. The stillness encouraged her, urged her. And, for
+the rest, had she not boasted a few minutes before that, whoever
+feared him, she did not; that, whoever drifted helpless on the tide of
+fate, she could direct her life, she could be strong?
+
+She had the chance now if she dared to take it! If she dared? Already
+she had thwarted him in a thing dear to him. She had released his
+prisoner, conveyed away his bride, wrecked his plans. Dared she thwart
+him in this last, this greatest thing? Dared she engage herself and
+him in a bond from which no power could free them, a bond that,
+the deed done, must subject her to his will and pleasure--and his
+wrath--till death?
+
+She did fear him, she owned it. And she had not dared the venture had
+she not loved him more. But love kicked the beam. Love won--as love
+ever wins in such contests. Swiftly her mind reviewed the position: so
+much loss, so much gain. If he would stand worse here he would stand
+better there. And then she did not come empty-handed. Fain would she
+have come to him openly and proudly, with her dower in her hands, as
+she had dreamed that she would come. But that was not possible. Or, if
+it were possible, the prospect was distant, the time remote; while,
+this way, love, warm, palpitating, present love, held out arms to her.
+
+The end was certain. For all things, the time, the gathering darkness,
+her gaoler's absence, seconded the temptation. Had she resisted longer
+she had been more than woman. As it was, she had time for all she must
+do. When the waiting-maid returned, and glanced around the darkened
+room, she was not surprised to find her crouching on the floor in the
+posture in which she had left her, with head bowed on the window-seat.
+But she was surprised to see that she had donned the bride-clothes set
+for her. True, the shimmer of white that veiled the head and shoulders
+agreed ill with the despondency of the figure; but that was to be
+expected. And at least--the woman recognised with relief--there would
+be no need of force, no scene of violence, no cries to Heaven. She
+uttered a word of thanksgiving for that; and then, thinking that light
+would complete the improvement and put a more cheerful face on the
+matter, she asked if she should fetch candles.
+
+"For I think the priest is below, my lady," she continued doubtfully;
+she had no mind to quarrel with her future mistress if it could be
+avoided. "And my lord may be looked for at any moment."
+
+The crouching figure stirred a foot fretfully, but did not answer.
+
+"If I might fetch them----"
+
+"No!" sharply.
+
+"But, if it please you, it is nearly dark. And----"
+
+"Am I not shamed enough already?" The bride as she spoke--in a tone
+half ruffled, half hysterical--raised her arms with a passionate
+gesture. "If I must be married against my will, I will be married
+thus! Thus! And without more light to shame me!"
+
+"Still it grows--so dark, my lady!" the maid ventured again, though
+timidly.
+
+"I tell you I will have it dark! And"--with another movement as of a
+trapped animal--"if they must come, bid them come!" Then, in a choking
+voice, "God help me!" she murmured, as she let her head fall again on
+her arms.
+
+The woman wondered, but felt no suspicion; there was something of
+reason in the demand. She went and told the elder woman who waited
+below. She left the room door ajar, and the Abbess, raising her pale,
+frowning face from the window-seat, could hear the priest's voice
+mingling in the whispered talk. Light steps passed hurriedly away
+through the garden, and after an interval came again; and by-and-by
+she heard more steps, and voices under the window--and a smothered
+laugh, and then a heavier, firmer tread, and--his voice--his! She
+pictured them making way for the master to pass through and enter.
+
+She had need of courage now, need of the half-breathed prayer;
+for there is no cause so bad men will not pray in it. Need of
+self-control, too, lest she give way and fall in terror at his feet.
+Yet less need of this last; for fear was in her part, and natural to
+the right playing of it. So that it was not weakness or modest tremors
+or prostration would betray her.
+
+She clutched this thought to her, and had it for comfort. And when the
+door opened to its full width, and they appeared on the threshold and
+entered, the priest first, the lord of Vlaye's tall presence next, and
+after these three or four witnesses, with the two women behind all,
+those less concerned found nothing to marvel at in the sight; nor in
+the dim crouching figure, lonely in the dark room, that rose
+unsteadily and stood cowering against the wall, shrinking as if in
+fear of a blow. It was what they had looked to see, what they had
+expected; and they eyed it, one coveting, another in pity, seeing by
+the half-light which was reflected from the pale evening sky little
+more than is here set down. For the priest, appearances might have
+been trebly suspicious, and he had suspected nothing; for he was
+terribly afraid himself. And M. de Vlaye, ignorant of the Abbess's
+visit and exulting in the success of his plan, a success won in the
+teeth of his enemy, had no grounds for suspicion. Even the marriage in
+the gloaming seemed only natural; for modesty in a woman seems natural
+to a man. He was more than content if the little fool would raise no
+disturbance, voice no cries, but let herself be married without the
+need of open force.
+
+With something of kindness in his tone, "The Countess prefers it thus,
+does she?" he said, raising his head, as he took in the scene. "Then
+thus let it be! Her will is mine, and shall be mine. Still it is dark!
+You do, in fact, Countess," he continued smoothly, "prefer it so? I
+gathered your meaning rightly--from those you sent?"
+
+With averted face she made a shamed gesture with her hand.
+
+"You do not----"
+
+"If it must be--let it be so!" she whispered. "And now!" And suddenly
+she covered her face--they could picture it working pitifully--with
+her hands.
+
+M. de Vlaye turned to his witnesses. "You hear all present," he said,
+"that it is with the Countess of Rochechouart's consent that I wed
+her. For me it is my part now and will be my part always to do her
+pleasure." Then turning his face again to the shrinking figure, that
+uttered no protest or word of complaint, "Father, you hear?" he
+continued, a note of triumph in his voice. "Do your office on us I
+pray, and quickly." And he advanced a step towards his bride.
+
+The Romish sacrament of marriage is short, and reduced to its
+essentials is of the simplest. Father Benet had his orders, and
+thankful to be so cheaply quit of his task--for she might have
+appealed to him, might have shrieked and struggled, might have made of
+his work a public crime--he hastened to bind the two together. For one
+second, at the most critical part of the rite--if that could be said
+to have parts which was done within the minute--the bride hung,
+wavered, hesitated--seemed about to protest or faint. The next, as by
+a supreme effort, she tottered a step nearer to the bridegroom, and
+placed her hand, burning with fever, in his. In a few seconds the
+words that made them man and wife, the irrevocable "_Conjungo vos_,"
+were spoken.
+
+Then followed a single moment of awkwardness. The Captain of Vlaye's
+heart was high and uplifted. All had gone well, all had gone better
+than his hopes. Yet he was prudent as he was bold. He would fain have
+raised her veil before them all and kissed her, and proved beyond
+cavil her willingness. But he doubted the wisdom of the act. He
+reflected that women were strange beings and capricious. She might be
+foolish enough to shriek--more, to faint, to resist, to speak; she
+might realise, now that it was too late, the thing which she had done.
+And a dozen curious eyes were on them, were watching them, were
+judging them. He contented himself with bowing over her hand.
+
+"Would you be alone, madame?" he said gently. "If so, say so, sweet.
+And you shall be alone, while you please."
+
+The answer, low and half-stifled as it was, astonished him. "With
+you," she murmured, with face half-averted. And as the others, smiling
+and with raised eyebrows, looked at one another, and then at a glance
+from him turned to withdraw, "And a light," she added, in the same
+subdued tone, "if you please."
+
+"Bring a light," he said to the waiting-woman. "And, mark you, see
+that when your lady wants supper it be ready for her."
+
+She had still, before they withdrew, a surprise for him. "I would have
+a draught of wine--now," she murmured.
+
+He passed the order to them with a gay air, thinking the while of the
+queer nature of women. And he stood waiting by the door until the
+order was carried out. The footsteps of the witnesses and their
+laughter rose from the garden below as the maid brought in lights and
+wine and set them on the table beside him. "You can go," he said; and
+after a fleeting glance, half of envy, half of wonder at her new
+mistress--who had sunk into a sitting posture on the window-seat--the
+woman went out.
+
+"May I serve you?" he murmured gallantly. And he poured for her.
+
+With her face turned from him she lifted the gauzy veil with one hand
+and with the other--it trembled violently--she raised the wine to her
+lips. Still with her shoulder to him--but he set this down to
+modesty--she gave him back the empty cup, and he went and set it down
+on the table beside the door. When he turned again to her she had
+raised her veil and risen to her feet, and stood facing him with
+shining eyes.
+
+"By Heaven!" he cried. And he recoiled a pace, his swarthy face gone
+sallow. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? The priest had been silent on the
+Abbess's visit. He believed her leagues distant. He had no reason to
+think otherwise. And he had not been more astonished if the one woman
+had turned into the other before his eyes. "By Heaven!" he repeated.
+For the moment sheer astonishment, the stupor of bewilderment, held
+him dumb.
+
+She did not speak, but neither did she quail. She stood confronting
+him, erect and stately, her beauty never more remarkable than now, her
+breast heaving slightly under the lace.
+
+"Am I mad?" he muttered again. And he closed his eyes and opened them.
+"Or dreaming?"
+
+"Neither!" she replied.
+
+"Then who in God's name are you?" he retorted, in something
+approaching his natural voice; though the awe of the unnatural still
+held his mind.
+
+"Your wife," she answered.
+
+"My wife!" With the words the full shock of that which had happened
+struck him.
+
+"Your wife," she rejoined unblenching, though her heart beat wildly,
+furiously, in her bosom, and she feared, ah, how she feared! "Your
+wife! And which of us two"--she continued proudly--"has a better right
+to be your wife? I,"--and with the word she flung the lace superbly
+from her head and shoulders, and stood before him in the full
+splendour of her beauty--"or that child? That puny weakling? That
+doll? I," with increasing firmness--he had not struck her yet!--"who
+have your vows, sir, your promises, your sacred oath--and all my due,
+as God knows and you know--or that puppet? I, who dare, and for your
+sake have dared--you know it only too well!--or that craven, puling
+and weeping and waiting for the first chance to flee you or betray
+you? What I have done for you"--and proudly she held out her hands to
+him--"you know, sir. What she would have done you know not."
+
+"I know that you have ruined me," he said, looking darkly at her.
+
+"And in return for--what?" she answered, with a look as dark.
+
+His nostrils quivered, a pulse beat hard in his cheek. Only the sheer
+boldness of that which she had done, only the appeal of the lioness in
+her to the lion in him--and her beauty--held his hand; held his hand
+from striking her down, woman though she was, at his feet. Had she
+faltered, had she turned pale or trembled, had she uttered but one
+word of supplication, or done aught but defy him, he had flung her
+brutally to the floor and trampled upon her.
+
+For the Captain of Vlaye was no knight of romance. And no scruple on
+his part, no helplessness on hers would have restrained his hand. But
+he loved her after his fashion. He loved her beauty, which had never
+been more brilliant or alluring; he loved the spirit that proved her
+fit helpmeet for such as he. And thwarted, tricked, baffled, hanging
+still on the verge of violence over which the least recoil on her part
+would push him, he still owned reason in her claim. She was the more
+worthy--of the two; such beauty, such spirit, such courage would go
+far. And not many weeks back he had looked no higher, aimed no
+farther, but had deemed her birth fit dower. But love sits lightly on
+the ambitious, and driven by a new danger to a new shift, forced to
+look abroad for aid, he had put her aside at the first temptation--not
+without a secret thought that she might be still what she had been to
+him.
+
+Her eyes, her words told a different story, and in his secret heart he
+gave her credit for her act; and he held his hand. But his looks were
+dark and bitter and passionate, as he told her again that she had
+ruined him, and flung it coarsely in her face that she brought
+herself, and naught besides to the bargain.
+
+"It is but a little since you thought that enough!" she replied, with
+flashing eyes.
+
+"You are bold to speak to me thus!" he said between his teeth. "What?
+You that call yourself my wife, to beard me!"
+
+"That am your wife!" she answered, though sick fear rapped at her
+heart.
+
+"Then for that the greater need to heed what you say!" he replied.
+"Wives that come empty-handed to husbands that ask them not had best
+be silent and be patient! Or in a very little time they creep as low
+as before they went high! You beautiful fool!" he continued, in a tone
+of mingled rage and admiration, "to do this in haste and forget I
+could punish at leisure! To do me ill, ay, to ruin me, and forget that
+henceforth my pleasure must be yours, my will your rule! My wife, say
+you?" with increasing bitterness. "Ay! And therefore my creature,
+helpless as the scullion I send to the scourge, or the trooper I hang
+up by the heels for sleeping! You--you----" and with a movement as
+fierce as it was sudden he grasped her wrist and twisted her round
+forcibly so that her eyes at close quarters looked into his. "Do you
+not yet repent? Do you not begin to see that in tricking the Captain
+of Vlaye you have made your master?"
+
+She could have screamed with pain, for the bones of her slender wrist
+seemed to be cracking in his cruel grip--but she knew that in her
+courage, and in that only, lay her one hope. "I know this," she
+replied hardily, forcing herself to meet his eyes without flinching,
+"that you mistake! I do not come empty--or I had not come," with
+pride. "I bring you that will save you--if you treat me well. But if
+you hold me so----"
+
+"What will you do?" savagely.
+
+"Release me and I will tell you," she answered. "I shall not fly. And
+if I say nothing to the purpose, I shall still be in your power."
+
+He yielded, moved in secret by her spirit. "Well," he said, "speak!
+But let it be to the purpose, madam, that is all."
+
+"Said I not it should be to the purpose?" she answered, her eyes
+bright. "And I keep my word, if you do not. Tell me, sir, frankly,
+what had that child, that doll"--bitterly--"to put in the scales
+against me? Beauty?"
+
+"Nay!"
+
+"A skin as white as mine or arms as round?" She held them out to him.
+"Or brighter eyes? You have looked in mine often enough and sworn you
+loved me, sworn that you would do me no wrong! You should know them--
+and hers!"
+
+"It was none of these."
+
+"Her birth? Nay, but she is no better born than I am! A Rochechouart
+is what a Villeneuve was. Her rank? No. Then what was it?"
+
+"No one thing," he answered drily. "But five hundred things."
+
+"Spears?"
+
+"You are quick-witted. Spears."
+
+"And her manors also, I suppose?" with contempt. "Her lordships here
+and there! Her farms and castles in Poitou and the Limousin and Beauce
+and the Dordogne! Her mills in the Bourbonnais and her fishings in
+Sologne!"
+
+"Not one of these!"
+
+"No?"
+
+"The spears only, as God sees me!" he answered firmly. "For without
+these I could enjoy not the smallest of those. Without these, of which
+you, beautiful fool, have robbed me--robbing me therewith of my last
+chance--I take no farm nor smallest mill, nor hold one groat of that I
+have won! Do you think, my girl," he continued grimly, "that I was not
+pressed when I gave up your lips and your kisses for that child's
+company? Do you think it was for a whim, a fancy, a light thing that I
+turned my back on you and your smiles, and at risk sought a puling
+girl, when I could have had you without risk? Bah! I tell you it was
+not to gain, but to hold--because he had no other choice and no other
+way--it was not for love but for life, that the King went to his Mass!
+And I to mine!"
+
+"All this I thought," she said quietly. She was no longer afraid of
+him.
+
+"You thought it?"
+
+"I knew it."
+
+"You knew it? You knew, madam," he repeated, his face darkening, "on
+what a narrow edge I stood, and you dashed away my one holdfast?"
+
+"To replace it by another," she replied, her figure welling with
+confidence. "I tell you, sir, I come not to you empty-handed, if I
+come unasked. I bring my dowry."
+
+He eyed her gloomily. "It should be a large one," he muttered, "if it
+is to take the place of that I have lost."
+
+"It is a large one," she answered. "But," with a change to gentleness,
+"do me credit. I have not puled nor wept. I have uttered no cry, I
+have made no complaint. But I have righted myself, doing what not one
+woman in a hundred would have dared to do! I have wit that has tricked
+you, and courage that has not quailed before you. And henceforward I
+claim to be no puppet for your play, no doll for your dull hours! But
+your equal, my lord, and your mate; deepest in your counsels, the
+heart of your plans, your other brain, your other soul! Make me this,
+hold me thus--close to you, and----
+
+"Is that the thing you bring me?" he said, with sarcasm. Yet she had
+moved him.
+
+"No!" She fell a little from her height, she looked appeal. "My dowry
+is different. But say first, sir, I shall be this!"
+
+"Bring me  the spears," he answered, his eyes gleaming, "and you shall
+be that and more. Bring me the spears, and----" He made as if he would
+take her forcibly in his arms.
+
+She recoiled, but her eyes shone. "I am yours," she said, "when you
+will! Do you not know it? But, for the present, listen. I have a
+husband, but I have also a lover. A lover of whom"--she continued more
+slowly, marking with joy how he started at the word--"my lord and
+master has no need to be jealous. He has not touched of me more than
+the tips of my fingers; yet if I raise but those fingers he has spears
+and to spare--five hundred and five hundred to that!--and I have but
+to play the laggard a little, and dangle a hope, and they dance to my
+piping."
+
+He understood. A deep flush tinged the brown of his lean face. "You
+have brought," he said, "the Duke to parley."
+
+"To parley!" She pointed superbly to the floor. "Nay, but to my feet!
+What will you of him? Spears, his good word, his intercession with the
+King, a post? Name what you will, and it shall be yours."
+
+He looked at her shrewdly, with a new admiration, a new and stronger
+esteem. Already she filled the place which she had claimed, already
+she was to him what she had prayed to be. "You are sure?" he said.
+
+"In a week, had I not loved you, I had had him and his Duchy, and all
+those spears! And mills and manors and lordships and governments, all
+had been mine, sir! Mine, had I wished this man; mine, had I been
+willing to take him! But I"--letting her arms fall by her sides and
+standing submissive before him--"am more faithful than my master!"
+
+He stood staring at her. "But if this be so," he said at last, his
+brows coming together, "what of it? How does it help us? You are now
+my wife?"
+
+"He need not know that yet."
+
+"No?"
+
+"He need not know it," she continued firmly, "until he has played his
+part, and wrung your pardon from the King! Or at the least--for that
+may take time--until he has drawn off his power and left you to face
+those whom you can easily match!"
+
+"He would have wedded you?" he asked, eyeing her in wonder.
+
+"For certain."
+
+"But, sweet----"
+
+"I am sweet now!" she said, with tender raillery.
+
+"To do this you must go to him?"
+
+"He shall touch of me no more than the tips of my fingers," she
+answered smiling. "Nor"--and at the word a blush stole upward from her
+neck to her brow, "need I go on the instant, if your men can be
+trusted not to talk, my lord."
+
+"He is soon without a tongue," he replied grimly, "who talks too fast
+here! You should know that of old."
+
+She lowered her eyes, the colour mounting anew to her brow. "Yes,"
+she murmured. "I know that your people can be silent. But the
+Lieutenant of Périgord is here. You have not"--with a quick,
+frightened look--"injured him?"
+
+"Have no fear."
+
+"For that were fatal," she continued anxiously. "Fatal! If things go
+wrong, he may prove our safety."
+
+"Pooh, I know it well," Vlaye replied, with a nod of intelligence.
+"None better, my girl. But have no fear, he will hear naught of our
+doings. Not, I suppose"--with a searching look, half humorous, half
+suspicious--"that he is also a captive of your bow and spear."
+
+"I hate him," she answered.
+
+Her tone, vehement, yet low, struck the corresponding chord in his
+nature. He took her into his arms with a reckless laugh. "You were
+right and I was wrong!" he cried, as he fondled her. "You will bring
+me more than a clump of spears, my beauty! More than that foolish
+child! God! In a month I had strangled her! But you and I--you and I,
+sweet, will go far together! And now, to supper! To supper! And the
+devil take to-morrow and our cares!"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                            FORS L'AMOUR.
+
+
+Though it was not des Ageaux' fate to lie in one of those underground
+dungeons, noisome and dark, which the lords of an earlier century had
+provided in the foundations of the castle, he was not greatly the
+better for the immunity. The humiliations of the mind are sometimes
+sharper than the pains of the body; and the Lieutenant of Périgord,
+defeated and a prisoner, was little the happier though a dry
+strong-room looking on a tiny inner court held him, and though he
+suffered nothing from cold or the slimy companionship of the newt and
+frog. On the ambitious man defeat sits more heavily than chains; into
+the nature that would fain be at work inaction gnaws deeper than a
+shackle-bolt. Never while he lived would des Ageaux forget the long
+hours which he spent, gazing drearily on the blank wall that faced his
+window, while his mind measured a hundred times over the depth and the
+completeness of his fall.
+
+He feared little for his life if he deigned to fear at all. He knew
+that he was a prize too valuable to be wasted. In the last resort,
+indeed, when all hopes had failed the Captain of Vlaye, and ruin
+stared him in the face, he might wreak his vengeance on the King's
+governor. But short of that moment--and it depended upon many
+things--the Lieutenant accounted himself safe. Safe as to life, but a
+beaten man, a prisoner, a failure; a blot, every moment he lay there,
+on the King's dignity, whose deputy he was; an unfortunate, whose ill
+hap would never be forgiven by the powers he had represented so ill.
+
+The misfortune was great, and, to a proud man, well-nigh intolerable.
+Moreover, this man was so formed that he loved the order which it was
+his mission to extend, and the good government which it was his to
+impose. To make straight the crooked--gently, if it might be, but by
+the strong hand if it must be--was his part in life, and one which he
+pursued with the utmost zest. Every breach of order, therefore, every
+trespass in his province, every outrage wounded him. But the breach
+and the trespass which abased in his person the King's name--he
+writhed, he groaned as he thought of this! Even the blow to his
+career, fatal as it promised to be, scarce hurt him worse or cut him
+so deeply.
+
+The more as that career which had been all in all to him yesterday was
+not quite all in all to him to-day. Bonne's voice, the touch of her
+hands as she appealed to him, the contact of her figure with his as he
+carried her, these haunted him, and moved him, in his solitude and his
+humiliation. Her courage, her constancy, her appeal to him, when all
+seemed lost, he could not think of them--he who had thought of naught
+but himself for years--without a softening of his features, without a
+flood of colour invading the darkness of his face. Strong, he had
+estranged himself from the tender emotions, only to own their sway
+now. With half his mind he dwelt upon his mishap; the other half, the
+better half, found consolation in the prospect of her sympathy, of her
+fidelity, of her gentle eyes and quivering lips--who loved him. He
+found it strange to remember that he filled all a woman's thoughts;
+that, as he sat there brooding in his prison, she was thinking of him
+and dreaming of him, and perhaps praying for him!
+
+It is not gladly, it is never without a pang that the man of affairs
+sees the world pass from him. And if there be nothing left, it is bad
+for him. Des Ageaux acknowledged that he had something left. A hand he
+could trust would lie in his, and one brave heart, when all others
+forsook him would accompany him whither he went. He might no longer
+aspire to government and the rule of men, the work of his life was
+over; but Bonne would hold to him none the less, would love him none
+the less, would believe in him truly. The cares of power would no
+longer trouble his head, or keep it sleepless; but her gentle breast
+would pillow it, her smiles would comfort him, her company replace the
+knot of followers to whom he had become accustomed. He told himself
+that he was content. He more than half believed it.
+
+In the present, however, he had not her company; and the present was
+very miserable. He did not fear for his life, but he lay in ignorance
+of all that had happened since his capture, of all that went forward;
+and the tedium of imprisonment tried him. He knew that he might lie
+there weeks and months and come forth at last--for the world moved
+quickly in this period of transition--to find himself forgotten.
+Seventy years earlier, a king, misnamed the Great, standing where he
+stood, had said that all was lost but honour--and had hastened to
+throw that also away. For him all was lost but love. All!
+
+He had passed four days--they seemed to him a fortnight--in this weary
+inaction, and on the last evening of the four he was expecting his
+supper with impatience, when it occurred to him that the place was
+more noisy than ordinary. For some time sounds had reached him without
+making any definite impression on his mind; now they resolved
+themselves into echoes of distant merry-making. Little spirts of
+laughter, the catch of a drinking-song, the shrill squeal of a maid
+pinched or kissed, the lilt of a hautboy--he began with quickened ears
+to make these out. And straightway that notion which is never out of a
+prisoner's mind and which the least departure from routine fosters
+raised its head. Escape! Ah, if he could escape! Freedom would set him
+where he had been, freedom would undo the worst of his mishap. It
+might even give him the victory he had counted lost.
+
+But the grated window or the barred door, the paved floor or the oaken
+roof--one of these must be pierced; or the gaoler, who never visited
+him without precautions and company, must be overcome and robbed of
+his keys. And even then, with that done which was well-nigh
+impossible, he would be little nearer to freedom than before. He would
+be still in the heart of his enemy's fortress, with no knowledge of
+the passages or the turnings, no clue to the stone labyrinth about
+him, no accomplice.
+
+Yet, beyond doubt, there was merry-making afoot--such merry-making as
+accounted for the tarrying of his supper. Probably the man had
+forgotten him. By-and-by the notes of the hautboy rose louder and
+fuller, and on the wave of sound bursts of applause and laughter came
+to him. He made up his mind that some were dancing and others were
+looking on and encouraging them. Could it be that the Captain of Vlaye
+had surprised the peasants' camp? and that this was his way of
+celebrating his success? Or was it merely some common-place orgie,
+held, it might be, in the Captain's absence? Or---- But while he
+turned this and that in his thoughts the footsteps he had been
+expecting sounded at the end of the stone passage and approached. A
+light shone under the door, a key turned in the lock, and the man who
+brought him his meals appeared on the threshold. He entered, his hands
+full, while his comrade, who had opened for him, remained in the
+passage.
+
+"You are gay this evening?" the Lieutenant said as the man set down
+his light.
+
+The fellow grinned. "Ay, my lord," he replied good-humouredly, "you
+may say it. Wedding-bells and the rest of it!" He was not drunk, but
+he was flushed with wine. "That is the way the world goes--and comes."
+
+"A wedding?" des Ageaux exclaimed. The news was strange.
+
+"To be sure, my lord.
+
+
+                    'En revenant des noces,
+                     Barabim!'"
+
+
+he hummed.
+
+"And whose, my man?"
+
+The fellow, in the act of putting a bowl of soup on the table, held
+his hand. He looked at the Lieutenant with a grin. "Ay, whose?" he
+said. "But that would be talking. And we have orders not to talk, see
+you, my lord. Still, it is not many you'll have the chance of telling.
+And, if I tell you it is the Captain himself, what matter? Should we
+be footing it and drinking it and the rest for another?"
+
+"M. de Vlaye married?" des Ageaux exclaimed in astonishment. "To-day?"
+
+"Married for sure, and as tight as Father Benet could marry him! But
+to-day"--with his head on one side--"that is another matter."
+
+"And the bride?"
+
+"Ay, that is another matter, tool" with a wink. "Not that you can let
+it out to many either! So, if you must know----"
+
+"Best not," intervened his comrade in the passage, speaking for the
+first time.
+
+"Perhaps you do not know yourself?" the Lieutenant said shrewdly. He
+saw that the man was sufficiently in drink to be imprudent. With a
+little provocation he would tell.
+
+"Not know?"--with indignation. "Didn't I----"
+
+"Know or not, don't tell!" growled the other.
+
+"Of course," said des Ageaux, "if you don't know you cannot tell."
+
+"Oh!" the fool rejoined. "Cannot I? Well, I can tell you it is
+Mademoiselle de Villeneuve. So there's for knowing!"
+
+Des Ageaux sprang to his feet, his face transformed. "What!" he cried.
+"Say that again!"
+
+But his excitement overreached itself. His movement warned the other
+that he had spoken too freely. With an uneasy look--what had he
+done?--he refused to say more, and backed to the door. "I have said
+too much already," he muttered sullenly.
+
+"But----"
+
+"Don't answer him!" commanded the man in the passage. "And hurry! You
+have stayed too long as it is! I would not be in your shoes for
+something if the Captain comes to know."
+
+Des Ageaux stepped forward, pressing him again to speak. But the man,
+sobered and frightened, was obdurate. "I've said too much already," he
+answered with a resentful scowl. "What is it to you, my lord?" And he
+slipped out hurriedly, and secured the door behind him.
+
+Des Ageaux remained glaring at the closed door. Bonne de Villeneuve
+had been taken with him. Bonne de Villeneuve also was a prisoner. Was
+it possible that she had become by force or willingly Vlaye's bride?
+Possible? Ah, God, it must be so! And, if so, by force surely! Surely,
+by force; his faith in her told him that! But if by force, what
+consolation could he draw from that? For that, if he loved her, were
+worst of all, most cruel of all! That were a thing intolerable by God
+or man!
+
+So it seemed to this man, who only a few days before had not known
+what love was. But who now, stung with sudden passion, flung himself
+from wall to wall of his narrow prison. Now, when he saw it snatched
+from him, now, when he saw himself denuded of that solace at which he
+had grasped, but for which he had not been sufficiently thankful, now
+he learned what love was, its pains as well as its promise, its
+burning fevers, its heart-stabbing pity! He lost himself in rage. He
+who for years had practised himself in calmness, who had made it his
+aim to hide his heart, forgot his lesson, flung to the night his
+habit. He seized the iron bars of his window and shook them in a
+paroxysm of fury, as if only by violence he could retain his sanity.
+When the bars, which would have resisted the strength of ten, declined
+to leave the stone, he flung himself on the door, and beat on it and
+shouted, maddened by the thought that she was under the same roof,
+that she was within call, yet he could not help her! He called Vlaye
+by dreadful names, challenging him, and defying him, and promising him
+terrible deaths. And only when echo and silence answered all and the
+iron sense of his helplessness settled down slowly upon him and numbed
+his faculties did he, too, fall silent and, covering his face with his
+hands, stagger to a seat and sit in a stupor of despair.
+
+He had put love aside, he had despised it through years--for this! He
+had held it cheap when it promised to be his--for this! He had
+accepted it grudgingly, and when all else was like to fail him--for
+this! He was punished, and sorely. She was near him. He pictured her
+in the man's power, in the man's hands, in the man's arms! And he
+could not help her.
+
+Had his impotent cries and threats been heard they had only
+covered him with humiliation. Fortunately they were not heard: the
+merry-making was at its height, and no one came near him. The Captain
+of Vlaye, aware that his marriage could not be hidden from his own
+men--for he had made no secret of it beforehand--had not ventured to
+forbid some indulgence. He could make it known that the man who named
+his bride outside the gate would lose his tongue; but, that arranged,
+he must wink--for every despotism is tempered by something--at a few
+hours of riot, and affect not to see things that at another time had
+called for swift retribution.
+
+The men had used his permission to the full. They had brought in some
+gipsies to make sport for them, a treble allowance of wine was on
+draught, and the hour that saw des Ageaux beating in impotent fury on
+his door saw the license and uproar of which he had marked the
+beginning grown to a head. In the great hall the higher officers,
+their banquet finished, were deep in their cups. In the cavernous
+kitchens drunken cooks probed cauldrons for the stray capon that still
+floated amid the spume; or half-naked scullions thrust a forgotten
+duck or widgeon on the spit at the request of a hungry friend. About
+the fires in the courtyard were dancing and singing and some romping;
+for there were women within the walls, and others had come in with the
+gipsies. Here a crowd surrounded the bear, and laid furious bets for
+or against; while yelps and growls and fierce barkings deafened all
+within hearing. There a girl, the centre of a leering ring, danced to
+the music of her tambour; and there again a lad tumbled, and climbed a
+pole at risk of his limbs. Everywhere, save in the dark garden under
+the "demoiselle's" windows, where a sentry walked, and at the great
+gates, where were some sober men picked for the purpose, wantonness
+and jollity held reign, and the noise of brawling and riot cast fear
+on the town that listened and quaked below.
+
+A stranger entering the castle would have judged the reins quite
+fallen, all discipline fled, all control lost. But he had been wrong.
+Not only did a sentry walk the garden path--and soberly and shrewdly
+too--but no man in his wildest and tipsiest moment ventured a foot
+within the railing that fenced the lime avenue, or even approached the
+gates that led to it without lowering his voice and returning to
+something like his normal state. For in the rooms looking over the
+garden M. de Vlaye entertained his bride of two days--and he had
+relaxed, not loosed, the reins.
+
+They sat supping in the room in which they had been wedded, and,
+unmoved by the sounds of uproar that came fitfully to their ears,
+discussed their plans; she, glowing and handsome, animated by present
+love and future hope; he, content, if not enraptured, conquered by her
+wit, and almost persuaded that all was for the best--that her charms
+and beauty would secure him more than the dowry of her rival. Their
+brief honeymoon over, they were to part on the morrow; she to pursue
+her plans for the Duke's detachment, he to take the field and strike
+such a blow as should scatter the peasants and dissipate what strength
+remained in them. They were to part; and some shadow of the coming
+separation had been natural. But her nerves as well as his were
+strong, and the gloom of parting had not yet fallen on them. The
+lights that filled the room were not brighter than her eyes; the snowy
+linen that covered the round table at which they sat was not whiter
+than her uncovered shoulders. He had given her jewels, the spoils of
+many an enterprise; and they glittered on her queenly neck and in her
+ears, gleamed through the thin lace of her dress, and on her round and
+beautiful arms. He called her his Abbess and his nun in fond derision;
+and she, in answering badinage, rallied him on his passion for the
+Countess and his skill in abduction. So cleverly had she wrought on
+him, so well managed him, that she dared even that.
+
+The room had been hung for her with tapestries brought from another
+part of the house; the windows more richly curtained; and a door, long
+closed, had been opened, through which and an ante-room the chambers
+connected with M. de Vlaye's apartments. Where the wedding robes had
+lain on the window-seat a ribboned lute and a gay music-book lay on
+rich draperies, and elbowed a gilded head-piece of Milanese work
+surmounted by M. de Vlaye's crest, which had been brought in for his
+lady's approval. A mighty jar of Provence roses scented the apartment;
+and intoxicated by their perfume or their meaning, she presently
+seized the lute, and gaily, between jest and earnest, broke into the
+old Angoumois song:--
+
+
+                    "Si je suis renfermée.
+                     Ah, c'est bien sans raison;
+                     Ma plus belle journée,
+                     Se pass'ra-z-en prison.
+                     Mais mon amant sans peine
+                     Pourra m'y venir voir,
+                     Son c[oe]ur sait bien qu'il m'aime,
+                     Il viendra'-z-au parloir!"
+
+
+And he answered her--
+
+
+                    "Oh, Madame l'Abbesse,
+                     Qu'on tire les verrous,
+                     Qu'on sorte ma maîtresse
+                     Le plus beau des bijoux;
+                     Car je suis capitaine,
+                     Je suis son cher amant,
+                     J'enfoncerai sans peine
+                     Les portes du couvent!"
+
+
+As he finished, disturbed by some noise, he turned his head. "I told
+your wench to go," he said, rising. "I suppose she took herself off?"
+With a frown, he strode to the screen that masked the door, and made
+sure by looking behind it that they had no listeners.
+
+She smiled as she laid aside the lute. "I thought that your people
+obeyed at a word?" she said.
+
+"They do, or they suffer," he answered.
+
+"And is that to apply to me?" with a mocking grimace.
+
+"When we come to have two wills, sweet, yes!" he retorted. "It will
+not be yet awhile. In the meantime I would this enterprise of yours
+were over. I doubt your success, though all looks well."
+
+"If I had been half as sure of you two days ago as I am of him
+to-morrow!" she retorted.
+
+"Yet you must not go too far with him."
+
+She waved her finger-tips across the table. "So far, and no farther,"
+she said lightly. "Have I not promised you? For the rest--what I have
+done I can do. Am I not armed?" And she rose from her seat, and stood
+before him in all the seduction of her charms. "Count it done, my
+master. Set Joyeuse aside. He is captive of _my_ bow and spear. The
+question is, can you deal with the rest?"
+
+"The peasants?"
+
+"And what remains of des Ageaux' power? And the Countess's levies?"
+
+"For certain, if the Duke be out of the reckoning," he answered.
+"He is a man. Remove him and des Ageaux--and the latter I have
+already--and there is no one. Your brothers----"
+
+"Bah!" She dismissed them with a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"Just so. And the Countess's people have no leader. The Vicomte is
+old. There is no one. Detach the Duke, and there will be a speedy end
+of them. And before a new governor can set to work to make head
+against me, many things may happen, my girl!"
+
+"Many things will happen," she answered with confidence. "If I can win
+one man, why not another? If a Duke, why not"--she made an
+extraordinary face at him, half-sportive, half-serious--"why not a
+greater? Eh, my lord?"
+
+He stared. "No!" he answered, striking the table with sudden violence.
+"No!" He knew well what she meant and whom she meant. "Not that! Even
+to make all good, not that!" Yet his eyes glittered as he looked at
+her; and it was plain that his thoughts travelled far and fast on the
+wings of her words. While she, in the pride of her mastery, returned
+his look fondly.
+
+"No, not that--never that!" she replied in a voice that more than
+reassured him. "It is for you and only for you that I do this. I am
+yours, all and always--always! But, short of that, something may be
+done. And, with friends at Court, from Captain of Vlaye to Governor of
+Périgord is but a step!"
+
+He nodded. "And a step that might save his Majesty much trouble," he
+said with a smile. "Do that---- But I doubt your power, my girl."
+
+"I have done that already should persuade you."
+
+"You have tricked me," he said, smiling. "That is true. And it is no
+mean thing, I grant."
+
+"More than that!" she retorted. The wine she had drunk had flushed her
+cheek and perhaps loosed her tongue. "More than that I have done! Who
+took the first step for you? Who put the Lieutenant in your hands--and
+my sister? And so, in place of my sister, the Countess?"
+
+He looked at her in astonishment. "Who?" he rejoined. "Why, who but I
+myself? Did I not take them with my own hands--at the old windmill on
+the hill? What had you to do with that?"
+
+"And who sent them to the windmill?"
+
+"Why, the rabble to be sure, who seized them, took them as far as the
+ford."
+
+"And who set the rabble on them?" As she asked the question she rose
+from her seat. In the excitement of her triumph, in the intoxication
+of her desire to please him she forgot the despair into which the act
+which she boasted had cast her but a week before. She forgot all
+except that she had done it for him whom she loved, for him who now
+was hers, and whose she was! "Who," she repeated, "set the rabble upon
+them?"
+
+"You?" he murmured. "Not you?"
+
+"I!" she said, "I!"--and held out her hands to him. "It was I who told
+the brute beasts that he--des Ageaux--had your man in hiding! It was I
+who wrought them to the attempt and listened while they did it! I
+thought, indeed, that it was your Countess who was with him. And I
+hated her! I was jealous of her! But, Countess or no Countess, 'twas
+done by me!--by me! And now do you think that there is anything I will
+not do for you? That there is anything I cannot do for you?"
+
+He was not shocked; it took much to shock the Captain of Vlaye. But he
+was so much astonished, he marvelled so much that he was silent. And
+she, reading the astonishment in his face, and seeing it grow, felt a
+qualm--now she had spoken--and lost colour, and faltered. Had she been
+foolish to tell it? Perhaps. Had she passed some boundary, sacred to
+him, unknown to her? It must be so. For as she gazed, no word spoken,
+there came into his face a change, a strange hardening. He rose.
+
+"My lord!" she cried, clapping her hands to her head, "what have I
+done?" She recoiled a pace, affrighted. "I did it for you!"
+
+"Some one has heard you," he answered between his teeth. And then she
+saw that he was looking not at her, but beyond her--beyond her. "There
+is some one behind that screen."
+
+She faced about, affrighted, and instinctively seized his arm and hung
+on it, her eyes on the screen. Her attitude as she listened, and her
+pallor, were in strange contrast with the gay glitter of the table,
+the lights, the luxury, the fairness of her dress.
+
+"Yes, listening," he said grimly. "Some one has been listening. The
+worse for them! For they will never tell what they have heard!"
+
+And bounding forward without warning, he dashed the screen down and
+aside--and recoiled. Face to face with him, cowering against the
+doorpost, and pale as ashes, was the very man she had mentioned a
+minute before--that very man of his whose hidden presence in the camp
+she had betrayed to the malcontents. Vlaye glared at him. "You!" he
+cried. "You!"
+
+"My lord!"
+
+"And listening!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"But! But die, fool!" the Captain retorted savagely. "Die!" And, swift
+as speech, the dagger he had stealthily drawn gleamed above his
+shoulder and sank in the poor wretch's throat.
+
+The man's hands groped in the air, his eyes opened wide; but he
+attempted no return-stroke. Choked by the life-stream that gushed from
+his mouth, he sank back inert like a bundle of clothes, while the
+Abbess's low shriek of terror mingled with his stifled cry.
+
+And, with a sterner sound, another sound. For as the man collapsed,
+and fell in on himself, a figure hitherto hidden in the doorway sprang
+over his falling body, a long blade flashed in the candle-light, and
+the Captain of Vlaye staggered back, one hand pressed to his breast.
+He made a futile attempt to ward with his poniard, but it fell from
+his grasp. And the pitiless steel found his heart again. Silent, grim,
+with unquenchable hate in his eyes, he reeled against the table. And
+then from the table, dragging with him all--silver and glass and
+fruit--in one common crash, he rolled to the floor--dying.
+
+Ay, in five seconds, dead! And she saw it with her eyes! Saw it! And
+frozen, stiff, clinging to the bare edge of the table, she stood
+looking at him, her brain numbed by the horror, by the suddenness, the
+hopelessness of the catastrophe. In a twinkling, in a time measured by
+seconds, it was done. The olives that fell from the dish had not
+ceased to roll, the wine still crept upon the floor, the man who had
+struck the blow still panted, his point delivered--but he was dead
+whom she had loved. Dead!
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                            HIS LAST RIDE.
+
+
+The man who had struck the blow, and whose eyes still sparkled with
+fury, turned them upon her. He took note of her stupor, frowned, and
+with a swift, cruel glance searched the room. The lights were in
+sconces on the walls, and had not suffered. The rest was wreck--a
+splendid wreck, mingled terror and luxury, with the woman's
+Medusa-like face gazing on it. The Duke--for he it was--still
+breathing quickly, still with malevolence in his eyes, listened and
+looked; but the alarm had not been taken. The lilt of a song and faint
+distant laughter, borne on the night air, alone broke the night
+silence. He passed to a window, and putting aside a curtain, peered
+into the darkness of the garden. Then he went to the door, and
+listened. Still all was quiet without and within. But to the scene in
+the room his gliding figure, his bent, listening head gave the last
+touch of tragedy.
+
+Presently--before, it would appear, he had made up his mind how to
+act--he saw a change come over the woman. Her breathing, which had
+been no more apparent for a time than the breath of the dead at her
+feet, became evident, her figure relaxed. Her attitude lost its
+stoniness; yet she did not stir to the eye. Only her eyes moved; and
+then at last her foot. Stealthily her foot--the man listening at the
+door marked it--slid from her robe, and unshod in its thin silken
+stocking--so thin of web that the skin showed through it--covered the
+poniard, still wet with blood, that had fallen from her husband's
+hand. Slowly she drew it nearer and nearer to her.
+
+He at the door made as if he did not heed. But when she had drawn the
+weapon within reach, and furtive and silent as a cat, stooped to grasp
+it, he was before her--so far before her, at least, that, though she
+gained it, he clutched her wrist as she rose. "No, madam!" he cried
+fiercely. "No! Enough!" And he tried to force it from her hand.
+
+No words came from her lips, but an animal cry of unutterable fury.
+She seized on his wrist with her left hand--she tried to seize it with
+her teeth; she fought to free herself, clinging to the knife and
+wrestling with him in the midst of the trampled fruit, the shivered
+glass, the mingled wine and blood that made the floor slippery.
+
+"Let it fall!" he repeated, hard put to it and panting. "Enough, I
+say, enough!" If he had loved her once he showed scant tenderness now.
+
+And she--her lips writhed, her hair uncoiled and fell about her. He
+began to wish that he had not dropped his sword when he sprang upon
+her. For he was still weak; and if she persevered she was more than a
+match for him. In her normal condition she had been more than a match
+for him; but the shock had left its secret sap. Suddenly, without cry
+or warning, her grasp relaxed, her head fell back, and she sank--all
+her length, but sideways--amid the ruin.
+
+He nursed his wrist a moment, looking askance at her, and thinking
+deeply and darkly. Assured at length that the swoon was no feint to
+take him unawares, he went to the door by which he had entered, passed
+through the empty ante-room, and thence into the Captain of Vlaye's
+apartments. In the passage outside the farther door of these a sleepy
+valet was on guard. He was not surprised by the Duke's appearance, for
+half an hour before--only half an hour!--he had allowed him and his
+guide to enter.
+
+"M. de Vlaye wishes to see the Captain of the gate," the Duke said
+curtly. "Bid him come, and quickly." And to show that he looked for no
+answer he turned his back on the man, and, without looking behind him,
+passed through the rooms again to the one he had left.
+
+Here he did a strange thing. On a side table which had escaped the
+general disaster stood some dishes removed from the chief table, a
+plate or two, a bread trencher, and a silver decanter of wine. After a
+moment's thought he drew a chair to this table, laid his sword on it
+beside the dishes, and, helping himself to food, began to eat and
+drink, with his eyes on the door. After the lapse of two or three
+minutes, during which he more than once scanned the room with a
+strange and inexplicable satisfaction, a knock was heard at the door.
+
+"Enter!" said the Duke, his mouth half-full.
+
+The door opened, and a grizzled man with a square-cut beard stepped
+in. He wore a breastpiece over a leather coat, and held his steel cap
+in his hand.
+
+"Shut the door!" the Duke said sharply.
+
+The man did so mechanically, and turned again, and--his mouth opened.
+After a few seconds of silence "Mon Dieu!" he whispered. "Mon Dieu!"
+
+"He is quite dead," the Duke said, raising his glass to his lips. "But
+you had better satisfy yourself. When you have done so, listen to me."
+
+Had the Duke been in any other attitude it is probable that the man
+had turned in a panic, flung the door wide, and yelled for help. But,
+seeing a stranger calmly eating and drinking and addressing him with a
+morsel on the point of his knife, the man stared helplessly, and then
+did mechanically as he was told--stooped, listened, felt for the life
+that had for ever departed. When he rose again "Now, listen to me,"
+said the other. "I am the Duke of Joyeuse--you know my name? You know
+me? Yes, I did it. That is not your affair--but I did it. Your affair
+is with the thing we have next to do. No--she is not dead."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" the man whispered. Old war-dog as he was, his cheeks were
+sallow, his hand trembled. A hundred dead, in the open, on the
+rampart, under God's sky, had not scared him as this lighted room with
+its medley of horror and wealth, its curtained windows and its
+suffocating tapestry, scared him.
+
+"Your affair," the Duke repeated, "is with what is to follow." He
+raised his glass, and held it between his eye and the light. "Do you
+take my side or his? He is dead--you see him. I am alive--you know me.
+Now hear my terms. But first, my man, what do you number?"
+
+The man made an effort, vain for the most part, to collect himself.
+But he managed to whisper, after a moment's hesitation, that they
+mustered four hundred and thirty, all told.
+
+"Fighting-men?"
+
+The man moved his lips without sound, but the other understood that he
+assented.
+
+"Very well," the Duke said. "All that is here I give you. Understand,
+all. Divide, sack, spoil; make your bundles. He is dead," with a
+glance at Vlaye's body, "he'll not say you nay. And a free pardon for
+all; and for as many as please--my service. All that I give, on
+condition that you open your gates to me and render the place three
+hours after sunrise to-morrow."
+
+The man gaped. The position was new, but he began to see his way. "I
+can do nothing by myself," he muttered.
+
+"You can have first search," Joyeuse retorted brutally. "There he
+lies, and his buttons are jewelled. And ten gold crowns I will give
+you for yourself when the place is mine. You know me, and I keep my
+word. I told your friend there, who got me entrance"--he pointed to
+the man Vlaye had stabbed--"that if his master laid a finger on him I
+would kill his master with these hands. I did it. And there's an end."
+
+The grizzled man's face was changed. It had grown cunning. His eyes
+shone with cupidity. His cheekbones were flushed. "And if they will
+not come into your terms, my lord?" he asked, his head on one side,
+his fingers in his beard, "what must I say you will do?"
+
+"Hang while rope lasts," the Duke answered. "But, name of God,
+man!"--staring--"beyond the spoils of the place what do you want? He
+is dead, you have no leader. What matter is it of yours or of theirs
+who leads?"
+
+The old soldier nodded. "That is true," he said: "we follow our
+wages."
+
+"One thing more--nay, three things," Joyeuse continued, pushing his
+cup and plate aside and rising to his feet. "The lady there--I trust
+her to you. Lock her up where she will be safe, and at daybreak
+see that she is sent to the convent. M. des Ageaux, whom you have
+below--not a hair of his head must be injured. Lastly, you must do no
+harm in the town."
+
+"I will remember, my lord, and tell them."
+
+"And now see me through the gates."
+
+The man grinned cunningly; but as one who wished to prove his
+astuteness, not as one who intended to refuse. "That is number four,
+my lord," he said, "and the chiefest of all."
+
+"Not so," the Duke answered. "It was on that condition I spared your
+life, fool, when you came in."
+
+"Then you knew----"
+
+"I knew that his buttons were jewelled."
+
+"My lord," the man said with admiration, "I vow you'd face the devil."
+
+"You will do that whether you will or no," the Duke replied drily,
+"some day. But that reminds me." He turned from his companion. He
+looked on the bloodshed about him, and gradually his face showed the
+first signs of compunction that had escaped him. Something of disgust,
+almost of distress, appeared in his manner. He glanced from one
+prostrate form to another as if he scarce knew what to do and
+presently he crossed himself. "Lift her to the couch there," he said.
+And when it was done, "My friend," he continued, in a lower tone,
+"wait without the door one minute. But do not go beyond call."
+
+The old soldier raised his eyebrows, but he, thoroughly won over,
+obeyed. Once outside, however, he pondered cunningly. Why had he been
+sent out? And thoughts of his jewelled buttons overcame him. After a
+moment's hesitation--for Joyeuse had put fear into him--he dropped
+softly to his knee and set his eye to a crack in the door.
+
+M. de Joyeuse was kneeling between the dead, his palms joined before
+his breast, his rosary between them. The lights of the feast, that
+shone ghastly on the grim faces and on the blood-pool about them,
+shone also on his uplifted face, from which the last trace of the
+tremendous rages to which he was prone had fled, leaving it pale
+indeed and worn--for the marks of his illness were still upon it--but
+calm and sublime. His eyes were upward bent. Those eyes that a few
+minutes earlier had burned with a hatred almost sub-human now shone
+with a light soft and ecstatic, such as shines in the eyes of those
+who see visions and hear voices. His lips moved without sound. The
+beads dropped one by one through his fingers.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+The hewers of wood and feeders of oxen who herded together in the town
+under the castle walls were timidly aware of the festivities above
+their heads. The sounds of brawling and dancing, of the tambour and
+glee, descended to them and kept them waiting far into the night. On
+occasions, rare, it is true, the war-lords above had broken loose from
+their bonds, and, mad with drink and frenzied with excitement, had
+harried their own town. Once, to teach a lesson, the thing had been
+done--but more completely and cruelly--by Vlaye's express order.
+The memory of these occasions remained, burned shamefully into the
+towns-folk's mind; and many a cotter looked up this night in trembling
+from his humble window, many a woman with her hood about her head
+stood in the alley whispering to her neighbour and quaked as she
+listened. Something beyond the ordinary was passing above, in the
+stronghold that at once protected and plundered them; something that a
+sad experience told them boded no good. Two or three young women of
+the better class went so far as to seek a sanctuary in Father Benet's
+chapel; while their fathers hid their little hoards, and their mothers
+took heed to quench the fires, and some threw water on the thatch--sad
+precautions which necessity had made second nature in many a hamlet
+and many a market-town of France.
+
+Had they known, these poor folk who paid for all, that their lord lay
+dead in the lighted room above, had they guessed that the hand which
+had held those turbulent troopers in order was nerveless at last,
+never again to instil fear or strike a blow, not even these
+precautions had contented them. They would have risen and fled, and in
+the marshes by the river or in remote meadows would have hidden
+themselves from the first violence of the troopers' outbreak. But they
+did not know, and they remained. And though those who were most
+fearful or least sleepy, women or men, noted that the lights above
+burned all night and that the tumult, albeit its note changed, held
+till dawn, they slept or kept vigil in security. The Duke's command
+availed. And no man, until the day was broad, left the castle.
+
+Then the gates were opened, and a procession numbering four score
+troopers--those who had the most to fear from justice or the least
+bent towards honest service--issued from them, and rode two abreast
+down the hill and through the town, They were in strange guise. Every
+man had a great bundle on his crupper, and some a woman; and every man
+rode gorgeous in silk or Genoa, or rich furs, with feathers and such
+like gewgaws. One had a headpiece damascened beyond price swinging at
+his shoulders, another flaunted trappings of silver, a third had a
+jewelled hilt, a fourth a bunch of clinking cups or a swollen belt.
+Behind them came a dozen spare horses, roped head and tail and high
+laden with casks and skins of wine; while hunting-dogs ran at the
+stirrups, and two or three monkeys and thrice as many chained hawks
+balanced themselves on the swaying casks. The men rode jauntily, with
+high looks and defiant voices, jesting and singing as they passed; and
+now and again a one aimed a blow at a clown, or, with rude laughter,
+flung a handful of coppers to the townsfolk, who shrank into their
+doorways to see them pass. But no man vouchsafed a word of
+explanation; only the last rider as he passed under the arch of the
+town gate turned, and, with his hands joined, flung behind him a
+derisive gesture of farewell.
+
+The townsfolk wondered, for the men were rich laden. Many a one
+carried a year's pay on his shoulders; and what they hid in their
+bundles might amount to many times as much. Moreover, they swaggered
+as men who mind no master. What then had happened? Nay, what was still
+happening? For it was plain that something was amiss above. From the
+castle proceeded a strange and continuous hum; a dull noise, as of
+bees swarming; a murmur compound of many sounds, and full of menace.
+
+But no man who was not in the secret guessed the truth or even came
+near it. And the sun had travelled far and the lads had driven the
+cows to pasture before the green valley of the Dronne, that had lain
+so long under the spell of fear, awoke to find its burden gone and to
+learn that a better time, bringing law, order, and justice, was at
+hand. About seven a body of horsemen were seen crossing the narrow
+plain which divided the place from the northern heights; and as these
+approached the bridge a lad, one of those who had first espied them,
+was sent to carry the alarm to the castle. The townsfolk looked to see
+a rush of armed men to the outer gate; or, if not that, something
+akin. But nothing of the kind followed, and while they stood gaping,
+uncertain whether to stand their ground or flee to hiding, the
+advancing horsemen, who numbered about two hundred, marched across the
+bridge with every sign of confidence.
+
+The Duke was not among them. Fatigue and the weakness caused by his
+wound had stood in the way of his return, and at this hour he lay in
+utter collapse in his quarters in the peasants' camp. His place was
+occupied by the Bat, who rode in the van with Charles de Villeneuve on
+his right and Roger on his left. The young men's minds were clouded by
+thoughts of their sister and her plight; but, in spite of this, it was
+a day of pride to them, a day of triumph and revenge--and they rode in
+that spirit. The Bat, to whom Hecuba was naught--it was long since a
+woman had troubled his peace--wore none the less a grave face. For
+time had pressed, the Duke's explanation had been brief though fervid,
+and the men had saddled and started within an hour of his return.
+Consequently all might be well, or it might be ill. The Captain of
+Vlaye's troops might surrender the place without a blow, or they might
+not. For his part, the Bat would not have risked his purse on their
+promise.
+
+But to risk his life and his men was in the way of war. And he moved
+steadily up the street, and gave no sign of doubt. Nevertheless it was
+his ear that, as they debouched into the market-place, caught the
+tread of a galloping horse on the flat beyond the river; and it was
+his hand that halted the men--apparently that the stragglers might
+move up and take their places.
+
+A minute or two later the galloping horse pounded under the gateway
+and clattered recklessly up the paved street. The sound of those
+hurrying hoofs told of news; and the men turned in their saddles and
+looked to learn who followed. The rider appeared in the open. It was
+Bonne de Villeneuve.
+
+Charles wheeled his horse, and rode down the column to meet his
+sister. "You have not come alone?" he said in astonishment, mingled
+with anger.
+
+She nodded, breathing quickly; and, supporting herself by one hand on
+the sweating horse, she pulled up. She was unable to speak for a
+moment. Then "I must go first!" she gasped. "I must go first."
+
+"But----"
+
+"I must! I must!" she replied. Her distress was painful.
+
+Her brother frowned. The Bat eyed her, in doubt and perplexity. But
+Roger spoke. "Let her go," he said in a low voice. "I understand. She
+is right."
+
+And though no one else understood, the Bat let her pass the head of
+the file of horsemen and ride alone up the way that led to the castle.
+The men, with wondering faces, watched her figure and her horse until
+the turn in the road hid her, and watched again until she was seen
+crossing the bridge which spanned the road. Immediately she vanished
+without let or hindrance.
+
+"The gates are open," some one muttered in a tone of relief. And the
+men's faces lost their gravity. They fell into postures of ease, and
+began to talk and exchange jests. Some gazed up at the castle windows
+or at that rampart walk, high above the town, which had been the
+Captain of Vlaye's favourite lounge of evenings. Only the foremost
+ranks, who could see the road before them and the bridge that crossed
+it, continued to look to the front with curiosity.
+
+It was one of these whose exclamation presently stilled all tongues
+and recalled all thoughts to the work in hand. An instant later the
+Bat's face turned a dull red colour. Roger laughed nervously. Some of
+the men swayed, and seemed inclined to cheer; others raised their
+hands, but thought better of it. The rear ranks rose in their
+stirrups. A moment and all could see des Ageaux coming down the road
+on foot. The Bat and the two Villeneuves went forward to meet him.
+
+He nodded to them without speaking. Then, "Why are you waiting?" he
+asked in a low voice. "Is it not all arranged?"
+
+"But mademoiselle," the Bat answered, staring. "Have you not seen
+her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But I thought--she asked us to wait."
+
+The Lieutenant of Périgord looked along the line of horsemen, whose
+bronzed faces and smiling eyes--all striving at once to catch
+his--gave him welcome. "I don't understand," he said. "I know nothing
+of this."
+
+"I do," Roger muttered. "I think Charles and I should go forward,
+and----"
+
+He did not continue. The Bat, by a movement which silenced him, called
+his attention to the bridge. On it a number of persons had that moment
+appeared, issuing from the castle gates, and directing their course to
+the tilt-yard crest. Their progress was slow, yet the gazers below
+could not, from the place where they stood, discern why; or precisely
+who they were. But presently, after an interval of suspense and
+waiting, the little company reappeared in the road below and began to
+descend the slope towards them. Then here and there a man caught his
+breath, and, as by one consent, all edged their horses to the side. M.
+des Ageaux bared his head, and the troopers, from front to rear,
+followed his example.
+
+It was a brief and mournful procession. In the van, riding where he
+had ridden so often, to foray and skirmish, the Captain of Vlaye rode
+his last ride, with a man at either rein and either stirrup, his
+war-cloak about him, and his steel headpiece nodding above his
+clay-cold face. His lance, with its drooping pennon, rose upright from
+his stirrup, and the faithful four who brought him forth had so fixed
+it that he seemed to grasp its shaft rather than to be supported by
+it. The sun twinkled on his steel, the light breeze caught and lifted
+the ends of his sash. As the old war-horse paced slowly and quietly
+along, conscious of its burden and of death, it was hard to say at a
+glance that the Lord of all the Valley was not passing forth as of old
+to battle; that, instead, he was moving to his last rest in the
+cloister which rose among the trees a half-league from the walls.
+
+A few paces behind him, in a mule-litter, was borne a woman swathed in
+black cloth from head to foot, so that not so much as her eyes
+appeared. On one side of the litter walked Bonne, her chin on her
+breast, and her hand resting on the litter's edge. On the other side
+walked a frightened waiting-woman.
+
+M. de Vlaye passed, the litter passed, all passed. But until the
+procession disappeared in the narrow street that led to the town gate
+no man covered himself or moved. Then, at a low word of command, the
+line of troopers rode on with a sudden merry jingle of bits and spurs,
+and, winding up the little gorge between the crests, marched over the
+bridge and through the open gates.
+
+The Lieutenant's first act was to go to a low rampart on the west side
+of the courtyard, whence it was possible to trace with the eye the
+road to the Abbey. Bonne had not looked at him as she passed, nor so
+much as raised her eyes. But he knew by some subtle sense that she had
+been aware of his presence and that he had her promise that she would
+return.
+
+Doubtless he looked forward to the moment of meeting; doubtless he
+looked forward to other things. But it was characteristic of the man
+that as soon as he had assured himself of her safe passage he turned
+without more ado to the work of restoring order, of raising the King's
+standard, and enforcing the King's peace.
+
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Abbess Of Vlaye, by Stanley J. Weyman
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABBESS OF VLAYE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38910-8.txt or 38910-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/9/1/38910/
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by
+Google Books (Harvard College Library)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.