"Where is Mademoiselle d'Albret?" asked Helen.
"Hush," he cried sternly, waving her back with his hand, and still listening to the door. Helen listened too, but she could hear nothing but the indistinct murmur of several voices speaking, mixed with the sound of horses' feet trampling and stamping, as if brought to an unwilling halt; but a moment or two after, some one spoke in a still louder tone, crying, "To Chartres!" and then came the noise of a party moving off, and the plashing sound of cavalry marching through the ford.
"Where is Mademoiselle d'Albret?" repeated Helen, as the farmer raised his head from the key-hole.
"Good faith, I cannot tell," replied he; "run up wife, run up to the room above! and see what is going on without."
The farmer's wife did as he bade her, and the next instant her feet were heard over head coming back from the window to the top of the stairs. "Ah, heaven!" she cried in a loud voice, "they have carried off the young lady, and Monsieur de Montigni, and his servant, and all. You should not have shut the door, Jean. You are a cruel, hard-hearted man. I heard them push it myself to get in; and now they are prisoners; and no one can tell what will happen."
"Hold your tongue! You are a fool, wife," answered the farmer angrily. "Do you think I was going to leave the house open for the Leaguers to come in! We should have had the place pillaged, and all our throats cut."
But the woman's tongue, as is sometimes the case with that peculiar organ in the female head, was not to be silenced easily, and she continued to abuse her husband, for excluding poor Rose d'Albret and her lover, in no very measured terms, while Helen de la Tremblade, sad and sorrowful, returned to the bed-side of the old commander to communicate the painful intelligence she had just received.
"Where is Rose?" demanded the old officer as soon as he saw her; "why does she not come?"
"Alas!" replied Helen, "a party of the League, just now sweeping by, have taken her away with them."
The old man, who by this time had been stripped of his arms, and laid in the bed, raised himself suddenly, and gazed in her face with a look of grief and consternation. Then sinking back upon the pillow again, he closed his eyes, but said not a word for several minutes. At length one of his attendants coming forward inquired, if he had not better ride away to St. André and seek for a surgeon.