CHAPTER XX.
AND AGAIN GOOD-BYE
Bayre saw that nothing was to be got out of the sullen peasant woman, so he led her out of the room, and into the hall, where Olwen, who had heard the noise of loud voices, was standing at the foot of the staircase.
Marie Vazon looked at her with an insolent frown.
“What was that noise?” asked Olwen. “And what was it that dropped or was thrown out of the window?”
Marie laughed harshly.
“Nothing of yours,” she replied insolently. “And nothing that you need concern yourselves about, either of you. Better hold your tongues about us, as well as about your uncle, if you want to keep the family respected. And you, monsieur, you can let me go. You will get nothing out of me, I can tell you.”
Bayre quite agreed with her on this point, and he drew the bolts of the door and let her out. He wanted to follow her, and to find out what she and her father were going to do with the booty they had obtained from the mansion; especially was he anxious to know what had become of the iron box which Marie had thrown out of the window to her father. But Olwen was suffering so severely from nervous shock, consequent upon the events of the day and the disturbance of the night, that she begged him not to leave the house until morning, alleging the terror she felt at the thought of being alone in the house with her disabled guardian and with two women-servants, both of whom were in a state of panic themselves.
Although he feared that this delay would enable the Vazons to get away with some valuable stolen property, the young man was unable to turn a deaf ear to the girl’s pleading; and he therefore spent the rest of the night in an uneasy patrol of the mansion, after shutting down the window through which Marie had communicated with her father, and cast out, as he could not but doubt, some of her master’s property.
With the first rays of morning, however, he had decided to go to the cottage of the Vazons in the hope that he might yet be in time to intercept their flight. But an unexpected obstacle was placed in his way. Olwen met him as he was drawing the bolt of the door, and told him that his uncle wished to see him.
She led him upstairs to the door of the old man’s room, where Bayre was rather surprised to find the invalid dressed and sitting in an easy chair by the embers of the fire. The curtains were still drawn, and the great room, which looked so cosy by candle-light, seemed cheerless as the grey morning light fell upon the ashes in the grate and upon the bent head of the old man in the chair.