"Ah, but she fought, the pretty baby! You should have given her the coffee. Then she would have walked with us. Now she must be carried. She's wicked, I can tell you."
Jeanne Leclerc twisted a lace scarf about the girl's face to hide the gag over her mouth, and, while Francine held her up, set her white cloak about her shoulders and fastened it in front. Espinosa then turned out the light and drew back the curtains.
The room was at the back of the house. In the front of the window the park stretched away. But it was the park of a French château, where the cattle feed up to the windows, and only a strip about the front terrace is devoted to pleasure-gardens and fine lawns. Espinosa looked out upon meadow-land thickly studded with trees, and cows dimly moving in the dusk of the summer night like ghosts. He opened the window, and the throb of the music from the ball-room came faintly to their ears.
"We must be quick," said Espinosa.
He lifted the helpless girl in his arms and passed out into the park. They left the window open behind them, and between them they carried their prisoner across the grass, keeping where it was possible in the gloom of the trees, and aiming for a point in the drive where a motorcar waited half-way between the house and the gates. A blur of light from the terrace and ornamental grounds in front of it became visible away upon their left, but here all was dark. Once or twice they stopped and set Ann upon her feet, and held her so, while they rested.
"A few more yards," Espinosa whispered and, stifling an oath, he stopped again. They were on the edge of the drive now, and just ahead of him he saw the glimmer of a white dress and close to it the glow of a cigarette. Swiftly he put Ann down again and propped her against a tree. Jeanne Leclerc stood in front of her and, as the truants from the ball-room approached, she began to talk to Ann, nodding her head like one engrossed in a lively story. Espinosa's heart stood still as he heard the man say:
"Why, there are some others here! That is curious. Shall we see?"
But even as he moved across the drive, the girl in the white dress caught him by the arm.
"That would not be very tactful," she said with a laugh. "Let us do as we would be done by," and the couple sauntered past.
Espinosa waited until they had disappeared. "Quick! Let us go!" he whispered in a shaking voice.