"'Four hours before you, and he has not arrived yet!'
"'This is most perplexing, M. le Marquis!' said I.
"'Oh, mon Dieu! what can have happened?' exclaimed mademoiselle, whom I now saw for the first time, and who was a fair blonde, with a beautiful skin and long dark eyelashes, which lent a softness and inexpressible charm to her face.
"I could not reply. My heart misgave me; for knowing D'Herblay as I did, I feared that something most unusual must have occurred to prevent his appearance at the chateau.
"Noon passed; the sun verged westward, and still he did not appear. I became seriously alarmed; the old marquis was perplexed and irritated; while Annette wept in silence.
"Horses were ordered at last, and with Chateaunoir, his son the Vicomte Henri, afterwards Colonel of the Grey Mousquetaires, and all his servants, I set forth to search the roads and inquire for my friend. For some time we prosecuted this object in vain; but after much labour and anxiety, judge of our horror, when in a secluded orangery, about two miles from Epinal, the young vicomte found a man lying on the grass wounded, bleeding and dying, surrounded by a group of pitying and terrified vine-dressers.
"The damps of death were on the brow of this unfortunate, who proved to be my friend, poor Louis d'Herblay.
"He was frightfully pale, having received several wounds—one of these in the bosom occasioned him the most exquisite agony. From this wound he had bled for some hours undiscovered, and now he was beyond all hope of recovery. Revived partially by our presence, by a cordial poured between his lips, and by the stoppage of the crimson tide which had soaked the soil whereon he lay, in broken accents and at long intervals, he related what had befallen him; and every word he uttered there, so slowly, painfully, and laboriously, sank deeply in our hearts, for they were too surely the last words of the dying.
"Loth to arouse me untimeously at Epinal, my kind friend had arisen, and softly descended the wooden stair, saddled his horse, and left the auberge by dawn. He departed from Epinal at a canter, and in the overflowing happiness of his heart was singing merrily, when at a solitary part of the road, he heard the hoofs of a galloping none, and a voice impetuously calling upon him to stop. Believing this follower was I, who had discovered his secret and hasty departure, he turned to find himself confronted by a tall stranger, whose face was concealed by a black velvet mask, and whom he believed to be a brigand or assassin.
"'Monsieur,' said the strange horseman, in a voice which, by its varying tones, was too evidently disguised as his face, 'you are abroad betimes.'