She read the letter in the hall. It was very short. When she had done so she put her hands over her eyes, read it again, and hurried to the bell-pull.
"Jean," she said, "order the carriage at once! I am going to St. Clair. There is not a moment to lose.... Give this letter to Monsieur le Marquis directly he returns."
(3)
It was six o'clock in the evening of the longest day that Armand de la Roche-Guyon had ever spent. He had hardly slept all night; at dawn he had risen and gone out, but since that time he had been a self-constituted prisoner. If, at any time, there was risk in his being seen—which he could not bring himself to believe—that risk was much greater in the day-time. Besides, he had Laurence to think of.
So he sat before the fireless hearth, he paced up and down, he flung himself on the settle, he examined over and over again all the heads of beasts upon the walls, the only ornaments of the place. The hut was very tidy, but he could not deck it as befitted the guest. He had told her last night that there were no roses, but it now occurred to him that he might at least have gathered this morning a branch of something green and living—a branch, for instance, of the flowering elder just outside. Thinking of these bushes, but without any intention of going out to rifle them, his restless feet carried him to the little half-shuttered window. Yes, there they stood, with their broad flat masses of blossom. How strong the scent had been last night! She would smell it as she came; she would hear the birds beginning their vespers. This golden sun would shine on her; would she ride or walk?
Leaning idly by the window, Armand looked at his watch. Half an hour still. He glanced at the elder-bushes again ... and suddenly even Laurence was forgotten, and the little trees were everything in the world to him. For among the leaves he had caught sight of a leaf of other kind, thin and shining. It was a bayonet.
Armand stood a moment incapable of thought or movement. Then the truth stabbed him with a cold and sickening pang. He looked again. Further along they had scarcely troubled to take cover; he could see the uniforms among the tree-trunks. He went a little white round the mouth, and moving away sank into a chair by the table and hid his face in his hands.
What he had thought so absurd, so incredible, had happened! He had been tracked or betrayed, and they were waiting to shoot him as he came out. They did not mean to force an entrance, that was obvious, or they would have done so by now. They had no intention, the careful Philippistes, of running any risks. They would wait there in ambush until he came out....
... Or till he came in. It might be that they were watching for his entrance, not knowing that he was there already. And that was, after all, a more likely explanation of their present inaction. More than that, it gave him a chance, a feeble glimmering chance, for his life. It was just conceivable that, seeing no one enter, they would go away without searching the hut. It was a chance, a chance ... O God! it was a chance....
But even as his mind caught at that slender hope, embracing it fiercely, the very heart in his body stopped beating. Seeing no one enter! Why, in half an hour Laurence would come along the clearing, and then ... He heard the report, saw her writhing on the ground... Why should they hesitate because she was a woman the men who could shoot a girl of sixteen in cold blood. She was a Carliste. It might even be she that they were expecting.