She screamed with terror, rose, reeled and fell to the floor.
At this appeal the door opened and Andrea, white and silent in her night-wrapper appeared like a ghost on the sill. When she had revived her mistress with the mechanical action of one impelled by sheer duty, the Queen remembered all the presage, and aware that it was a woman beside her, flung her arms round her neck, and cried:
“Save me, defend me!”
“Your Majesty needs no defense among her friends,” said Andrea, “and you appear free of the swoon in which you fell.”
“Countess Charny,” gasped the other, letting go of her whom she had embraced, and almost repelling her in the first impulse.
Neither the feeling nor the expression had escaped the lady. But she remained motionless to impassibility.
“I shall undress alone,” faltered the Queen. “Return to your room, as you must require sleep.”
“I shall go back, not to sleep but to watch over your Majesty’s slumber,” returned Andrea, respectfully curtseying to the other and stalking away with the solemn step of a vitalized statue.
CHAPTER VI.
THE REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRY.
OUR intention being to temporarily abandon the fortunes of our high and mighty characters to follow those of more humble but perhaps no less engaging heroes, we take up with Sebastian Gilbert whom his father, immediately after his release from the Bastile, confided to a young peasant named Ange Pitou, foster-brother of the youth, and despatched them to the latter’s birthplace, Villers Cotterets.