"Impossible, father dear," she said, still striving to speak bravely. "We have both of us been all this while in the power of Pierre Adet; he could have had no object in bringing me here to-night."
But the father who had been an insentient tool in the schemes of that miserable intriguer, who had been the means of bringing his only child to this terrible and deadly pass—the man who had listened to the lying counsels and proposals of his own most bitter enemy, could only groan now in terror and in doubt.
"Who can probe the depths of that abominable villain's plans?" he murmured vaguely.
In the meanwhile the little group who had thought prudence the better part of valour had reached the door. The foremost man amongst them opened it and peered cautiously out into the darkness. He turned back to those behind him, put a finger to his lip and beckoned to them to follow him in silence.
"Yvonne, let us go!" whispered the duc, who had seized his daughter by the hand.
"But father...."
"Let us go!" he reiterated pitiably. "I shall die if we stay here!"
"It won't be for long, father dear," she entreated; "if milor should come with his friend, and find us gone, we should be endangering his life as well as our own."
"I don't believe it," he rejoined with the obstinacy of weakness. "I don't believe in your message ... how could milor or anyone come to your rescue, my child?... No one knows that you are here, in this hell in Nantes."
Yvonne clung to him with the strength of despair. She too was as terrified as any human creature could be and live, but terror had not altogether swept away her belief in that mysterious message, in that tall guide who had led her hither, in that scarlet device—the five-petalled flower which stood for everything that was most gallant and most brave.