"I love him I love him! I love him!" Sylvia was whispering to herself now, even as preparations were being made to remove Bevill from this old, dark, and weird hall that reeked of the memories of innumerable cruelties; Francbois being already removed. "I love him. And--and he thought to save me. He deemed I needed assistance, rescue. Now it is he who needs earthly salvation, he whose impending lot cries for prompt succour. Ah, well! help, succour, shall be forthcoming unless I die in an attempt to obtain it. Oh!" she gasped, her hands to her breast, "they are leading him away--from me!"
With one swift movement she was by Bevill's side; a moment later she was clasped to his heart; another, and he was murmuring words of love and farewell in her ears.
"Adieu! Adieu, Sylvia," he said. "Nay, my sweet!" he whispered, "let fall no tears; weep not for me. I have won your love; the happiest hours of my life have come. Since I may be no more by your side--as yet--I have the thoughts of you to solace me; the thought, the pride of knowing I have won your love, that I alone dwell in your heart."
While, seeing that De Violaine in his delicacy had turned his eyes away, and was gazing into the great empty fireplace until this sad parting should be made; seeing, too, that even the rough troopers had turned their eyes from them, he embraced Sylvia for the first time--the first time and, as he feared, the last.
"I love you," he whispered. "Whate'er betide, remember my last words are these. Remember that, if the worst befalls, my last thought shall be of you, my last prayer for you, your name the last word on my lips. Farewell."
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
The weather that, through the latter part of June and July, had held so fine, had changed at last. With that persistency which for centuries has caused all in the Netherlands to say that their climate is the worst in Europe, or at least the most unreliable, a rainy season had again set in accompanied by considerable cold. The rivers were so swollen now that, in the case of all the great ones, the usually slow, turgid streams had turned into swirling volumes of water, resembling those which, in mountainous regions, pour forth from their icy sources; even the smaller waterways had overflowed their banks and submerged the low-lying fields around them. Thus, except in some particular instances, all military operations had come to an end for the time; the thousands of soldiers who composed the rival armies, and were drawn from half the countries in Europe, lay idle in their tents--when they had any--or in some town they had possessed themselves of; or, in many cases, on the rain-soaked ground.
Of these armies none suffered worse than did the principal portion of the English forces--namely, that under the Earl of Marlborough. For the torrid heat of July was all gone now--that heat of which, but a week or so before, Marlborough had made mention in one of his frequent letters to his wife, while adding the hope that it would ripen the fruit in their gardens at St. Albans, the gardens so dear to him since he knew well enough that she walked in them daily and thought always of him. For whatever John Churchill's faults might be, and whatever the faults of his beautiful but shrewish wife might be, neither failed in their absorbing love for one another--the love that had sprung into their hearts when he was but a colonel and gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke of York and she a maid of honour to the Duchess.
The heat and fine weather were gone, and for refuge, there was little but the open left for the English troops. It was true Kaiserswörth was taken at this time, Breda was occupied by the English, Maestricht was the same, and Nimeguen had been long in our hands; but with these exceptions Marlborough, with 60,000 men under his command, lay almost entirely in the open. His lordship was at this time at Grave on the Meuse on his way to Venloo, there to attempt the siege and capture of that town, it lying some forty-five miles south of Grave and fifty miles north of Liége.
But however impassable, or almost impassable, the roads were at this present moment, traffic on them, other than that caused by the French and allied armies, had not ceased, for the sufficient reason that it could by no possibility do so. Along every road there streamed wagons and provisions, which, since the latter were to be offered to the first would-be purchasers, were in little danger of being seized as contraband of war by either side, especially as both the contending forces paid for what they appropriated, though, as often as not, the payment was not what the vendors demanded.