"Madame," retorted Fortuné de la Vireville, his hand on the latch of the door, "some have thought that children are peculiarly the objects of angelic protection. We shall see about that twenty-four hours' start!"
As he shut the door he was aware of a little laugh, and the words, in a voice of mock surprise, "Monsieur est donc dévot?"
Dévot indeed La Vireville was not, and no real confidence in celestial intervention, but wrath and dismay filled his heart as he rode off in the rain and the darkness. But it was not in him to show other than a bold front to an enemy, whatever his secret apprehensions. It was not very likely that he would be able to get the boy out of the hands of his captors without, himself, paying the ultimate penalty. Still, there was a chance, and he meant to stake everything upon it. Only, as he hastened to the Rose and Crown to change his horse, it occurred to him most unpleasantly that perhaps he was being utterly duped; that Anne-Hilarion had, perhaps, never been taken to France after all, and that he was going to put his head into the lion's mouth for nothing. And he cursed the maddening uncertainty of the whole affair, where the only fact that stood out with real clearness was the jeopardy in which he was about to place his own neck.
In the midst of the business of hiring another horse, he suddenly remembered Elspeth, and wondered that he had not thought of her before. She must know something. But where was she? Had they shipped her off too? It seemed unlikely—yet equally unlikely was it that they had either left her free to hurry back to London with her tale, or had made away with her. They had probably arranged for a temporary disappearance. If he looked for her he would waste the time on which so much depended, and even if he found her she would not, probably, be able to tell him a great deal. And so La Vireville, whose life of late years had taught him the faculty of quick decision, resolved not to pursue that trail.
He wrote at the inn a letter to Mr. Elphinstone, explaining what he was about to do, made arrangements for it to be taken by special messenger to London, and, in a quarter of an hour or so, on a fresh horse, was galloping through the rainy night along the Dover road.
BOOK TWO
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND
"O they rade on, and farther on,
And they waded rivers abune the knee;
And they saw neither sun nor moon,