"Here? Who?" the Comtesse also exclaimed. "The English? The Allies?"
"Some of them at least. Oh! Radegonde, I have seen their scarlet coats, and, on one, the gorget of our dragoon officers. Yet, alas! alas! they are retiring; he who wears the gorget has disappeared behind a larger tree than all the others."
"Cry out then! Cry to him! Call him back! Let us do anything to arrest their attention. If we fail to speak with them now we may not find their commander for days."
"No, no; we need not," Sylvia again exclaimed now. "They have observed us. They are coming towards us, doubtless to see what this carriage contains. Two officers. And they are English. Thank God!"
As she said, so it was. The two officers now approaching the carriage had seen it long before Sylvia had perceived them, and were at once inspired with the scouts'--for such they and their men were--proper sense of duty, namely, to discover what was the business of everyone with whom they might chance to come into contact. But--as the phrase which had sprung into use when the century, still so young, had but just dawned, ran--"It was seventeen hundred and war time," and, above almost all else, in war time prudence is necessary. Therefore, on seeing the carriage approach, the officers had retreated behind the great tree, while their troopers had ridden deeper into the plantation and, from there, the former had been able to observe who and what were those inside the vehicle.
"Women!" one said to the other. "Dangerous enough sometimes, when armed for our subjection and clad in velvet and Valenciennes, yet harmless here, unless they be spies of the enemy. No matter, 'tis our duty to discover who and what they are." Whereupon the officers turned their horses' heads towards the carriage, and the animals picked their way through what was almost a quagmire until they reached it.
"Their laced hats in hand, the two
young men drew near the window."
Their laced hats in hand, the two young men bowed gracefully as they drew near the window, after which the captain, speaking in fair French, though not such as Bevill Bracton spoke, asked in a gentle, well-bred voice if there were any directions or assistance they could give mesdames to aid them on their route? But, ere he had concluded his courteous speech, he halted in it and finished it in but a shambling manner; for his eyes, discreetly as he had used them to observe the equal, though different, beauty of each woman, had told him that one at least of those before him was not seen for the first time. And that one--the Comtesse--was herself gazing fixedly at him.
"Madame travels far; madame's journey is not yet concluded," he murmured. "Madame has left Liége."