“You are dreaming.”
“No.”
They looked at each other for a moment. The marquis divined the whole truth, and he took her in his arms. “No matter!” he said, “I love you still.”
“All is not lost!” cried Marie, “it cannot be! Alphonse,” she said after a pause, “there is hope.”
At this moment they distinctly heard the owl’s cry, and Francine entered from the dressing-room.
“Pierre has come!” she said with a joy that was like delirium.
The marquise and Francine dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with that amazing rapidity that belongs only to women. As soon as Marie saw her husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped hastily from the room with a sign to her faithful maid. Francine then took the marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber. The young man seeing a large number of sheets knotted firmly together, perceived the means by which the girl expected him to escape the vigilance of the soldiers.
“I can’t get through there,” he said, examining the bull’s-eye window.
At that instant it was darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, “Make haste, general, those rascally Blues are stirring.”
“Oh! one more kiss,” said a trembling voice beside him.