"She is not. She and Ra--Madame de Valorme--have taken their own way--have placed leagues between them and this place. If she were here, she should see you."
After which, as though feeling that he had said more than became the Governor of this fortress, and of others in the city, who held in his hands a prisoner belonging to the enemy, De Violaine went towards the door. Arrived at it, however, he paused, and looked back while saying:
"Whatever faults you have committed against France, there was not one of those who judged you a week ago who did not sympathise with, nay pity, you. You heard the noble reason De Guise gave for not signing; the reason I gave for signing. And of the others--some of them worn veterans who have crossed swords with those of England scores of times--all acquitted you in their hearts, even while, in duty, condemning you. Tallard will be no harder than they, provided ever that Marlborough has himself been merciful to De Cabrieres, the prisoner whose fault is as yours."
"All sympathised with, all pitied me," Bevill said to himself when De Violaine was gone. "Even though they condemned me as they did so. Ah! well, I must bear my lot whate'er befall. I knew the chances and faced them ere I left England; they have gone against me--let me face that, too."
"Yet," he continued to muse, "'twas strange that the one from whom the Comtesse de Valorme feared the worst might come--De Guise--should have been the only one who refused to sign my condemnation."
But now, as ever, his thoughts wandered from any fate, good or bad, that hovered over him to what she, his love, was doing, to where she might be. And in those thoughts there was always one surety strong and triumphant over all the rest. The thought, the certainty, that his image was never absent from her heart, the confidence that, since she had escaped out of Liége, the escape had only been made with a view to endeavouring to obtain succour for him.
Though whether that endeavour, wild, almost hopeless as it must be, could meet with success was more than he dared dream of.
"I am in God's hand," he murmured. "In God alone I must put my trust."
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
October had come by now, Marlborough's camp was at Sutendal, and the army was but waiting to receive the latest information as to the disposal of the French round Liége to throw their pontoons across the river Jaar, and, after crossing, to march in two columns on that city. Venloo was taken, so, too, were Ruremond and Stevenswaert; the Earl, to use his own words, had now but one enemy between him and Liége--the weather.