"It may be so; but ere that can be, I must clear my way to Liége. There are towns and fortresses upon the road. Venloo is one, and time is necessary."
"Time! Oh!" the girl almost gasped. "Time! And in that time they may have tried Mr. Bracton and--ah! I cannot utter it!"
"It may indeed be so," he murmured, seeing the look on Sylvia's face. "I would not say a word to alarm you; but courts-martial, trials in war time, are apt to be swift. And the condition of Mr. Bracton is perilous; he has placed himself in a dangerous position."
"My lord," the Comtesse said, "we have heard but lately that in your hands is one, the Marquis de Cabrieres, who lies under sentence of death for a similar offence against you and a town in your possession. Yet he still lives. May it not be the same, may we not hope the same respite, for Mr. Bracton?"
As she spoke, not only she, but Sylvia too, saw that her words had had some strange effect on the Earl. They observed a light come in his eyes, a little more colour mount to his cheeks--evidences that those words had produced in his mind some striking effect. That effect they were soon to learn.
He went to a coarse, wooden table, covered with papers--a table that had, doubtless, been purchased with many others for a few gulden at some town through which the army passed, and, taking from off it two of those papers, said, as he held them in his hand:
"Here is a letter to M. de Boufflers which I have caused to be written--such things are usual enough between the conflicting armies--suggesting an exchange of prisoners----"
"Ah!" exclaimed Sylvia. "I understand."
"Yet, see," Marlborough went on imperturbably, "I destroy it," and he suited the action to the word. Then observing, as he observed everything, the look of horror, of broken-hearted grief, on the faces of the others at his action, he added, "Because Mr. Bracton's name is not in it; because I was ignorant of him, though now I remember his name and the circumstances of his removal from the Cuirassiers. Yet, I beseech you, be easy in your minds. Another letter shall be written; it shall contain his name."
"God in heaven bless you!" Sylvia murmured.