“It is of no use. No use. My decision is final.”
The girl stood erect. She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at the knight with a strange and distressed expression. Gradually her look became colder and more fixed, and at last he realized her undaunted determination.
“My decision is made too, uncle. I will not go to a convent. I would rather fall into the hands of the English. But the situation is not so desperate as that. I will let my kinsman La Hire know. He will protect me. Let me have a messenger, uncle. In an hour I will have a letter ready.” Thereupon she left the room.
“Well, what do you think now, noble knight?” began the Bishop.
“Pah!” he replied, “I will send her a messenger who will throw her letter into the first forest brook he comes to, and return without seeing La Hire.”
On the morning of the fourteenth day after this scene, a heavy travelling carriage stood in the castle yard with an escort of six armed men. Marie lay sobbing in the arms of Madame de Luxemburg. Still sobbing, she at last followed the impatient lord of the castle to the carriage. Nothing had been heard from La Hire, and when, as John of Luxemburg had said, an attack upon the castle was likely to be made, he told Marie he would accompany her to her kinsman. At the first inn they met the Bishop of Beauvais, apparently by accident. As he was journeying in the same direction he accepted the knight’s invitation to take a seat in the carriage.
Overcome with grief, and not expecting any trickery, Marie at first did not notice the road they were taking. After passing three or four inns, however, she saw that they were going west instead of south. Not even then did she suspect treachery. They easily satisfied her inquiries by pretending they must take a circuitous route to avoid encountering the English. When, however, they kept on in the same direction the next day, her suspicions were fully aroused.
“Uncle,” she said, “you cannot deceive me any longer; you are not taking me to Chinon. What are you going to do with me?”
“I will not deceive you, child,” replied the knight, for pretense was useless any longer. “I cannot carry out my plan to take you to Chinon. The whole district of the Loire is in the hands of the English. I cannot even get back to Beaurevoir, so nothing remains but—”
“But what?” she piteously exclaimed.