Valentine, turning quite white, went to her husband’s side, and Gaston, who had jumped up, looked quickly round the room. “The window,” he suggested; but at the same moment came a blow on the shutters outside.
“No, no!” exclaimed Marthe, as pale as Mme de Trélan. “Behind you—the hangings!” And she all but pushed him to the wall, parted the hangings of woven Indian stuff, and with her little hands drew them hastily over him again. Then she ran to the long window, on which repeated blows were raining. Mme de la Vergne, nervous but collected, went to the door. And Valentine was left by the hearth to see that Marthe’s work was not completed. For under the thin gay riot of branches, birds and flowers that concealed him, were only too plainly visible Gaston’s boots—the hangings did not quite reach the floor. It seemed to her that in that second she knew the concentrated anguish of a lifetime—for Marthe’s quick wit had been right; it was the only possible place in the room. Yet she had seized a brocaded cushion from the sofa, had cast it down against the hangings on her husband’s feet as though it had fallen there, and, placing a low chair in front of it, had herself sat down as a living screen, all before the door actually opened and the Republican officer and his men came in.
If the search had been anything but perfunctory, Gaston de Trélan must have been discovered. But the officer, it was obvious, had no idea whom the Château de la Vergne was harbouring, nor indeed, that it was specifically harbouring anybody, and he was almost apologetic at disturbing the ladies. But—orders were orders. Round the salon, therefore, he merely took a long glance, and when they had searched the rest of the house with about the same particularity, the Blues went away, and the inmates of the château could sleep in perfect security.
But not Valentine. For all her courage and resource she came near breaking down when she was at last alone with her husband.
“I feel as if I should never sleep again!” she said, pressing the palms of her hands over her eyes. “I see nothing but those men’s faces and the way they looked round the room. Gaston, Gaston, I am not fit to be your wife!”
“Never would I have come,” said he remorsefully, holding her in his arms as they stood by the hearth in her room, “never would I have come had I known it would be to put you to such strain!”
“Gaston, is it true that the Royalists have no artillery?”
“Yes,” he replied unwillingly.
“And these Republican victories in Holland and Switzerland—are they not very unfortunate?”