A moment later and when now Sylvia stood once more upright before him, he, taking her hand and raising it to his lips, said:
"It may not be that he shall perish. Mr. Bracton must live even to claim you for his bride. Therefore, your desire to return to Liége with the letter--it is a shrewd one, worthy of a woman's wit!--shall not be gainsaid. While, for the rest, you shall be accompanied some part of the way, 'Tis but a day's ride. Also," and now his voice sank a little lower so that the shrillness that was so often apparent in it was no longer perceptible, "if they permit that you should see him, your affianced husband----"
"Ah!" Sylvia said. "If--if I should see him! If--no! no!" she almost moaned. "I cannot say the words." But recovering herself a moment later, forcing herself to be valiant, she continued, "If he--is--still--alive it may be we shall become fellow prisoners. Once M. de Violaine has me in his keeping again he will give me no further chance of escape."
"Nor me," the Comtesse said. "In his stern sense of honour he will deem me a traitor. Though I am none to France but only to the King and 'her'--to the woman he has made his wife." For it was as "her" and "she" that all France spoke of the "dark and fatal woman," De Maintenon--all France, no matter of what faith, while at the same time refusing to accord her the title of Queen or the right to bear that title. De Maintenon who, born a Protestant, had now been for years the most cruel and vindictive oppressor of all Protestants.
"If it may be so," Marlborough continued; "say to him, I beg, that from the moment we meet again he shall become once more a soldier of the Queen. Even though he has not accomplished that which he set out to do, the attempt was gallant, was well worthy of reward."
"Heaven above bless you," Sylvia said, and now she held out her hand to Marlborough, while, as he took it and as, for a moment, his eyes scanned all the troubled beauty of her face, she added: "Henceforth, no matter what befall, in the prayers of a humble subject of that Queen her greatest subject shall be remembered. Farewell, my lord. I thank you from my heart."
"Not farewell. We shall meet again at Liége. We and one other--your future husband. I pray it may be so. Such noble bravery as yours cannot surely go unrewarded."
And now, ere departing, he turned from Sylvia to the Comtesse de Valorme, his manner to her equally full of the chivalrous courtesy which never failed him.
"Madame," he said, "ere you, too, depart with your friend, believe that, as I have already said, England is preparing to make the cause of those in the South of France hers. Already there are thousands of French Protestants who have found succour and shelter in our land; the Queen's intentions towards all of the Protestant religion cannot be doubted. The matter is already broached. The Council is deliberating on sending a fleet to the Mediterranean to succour those of your faith and ours. Rest assured, madame, nothing will be forgotten that can aid them."
As the Earl of Marlborough spoke, doubtless through the information he was regularly supplied with from England, so things occurred. Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the English admiral, did send the Pembroke and the Tartar to the Gulf of Narbonne with a view not only to supply the Camisards with money and arms and ammunition, but also to land men to assist them. But, when they arrived off the coast and made signals all night, there were none on shore who could comprehend them, for the simple reason that the French Protestant who had been sent by the Earl of Nottingham from London with the key to these signals, had been arrested before he could reach Cette, and his body was at the very time lying broken to pieces and mutilated on the wheel at Aigues-Mortes. Later, but unhappily much later, the peace that was patched up between Louis and his Protestant subjects came about not by the force of arms but by the humanity of a French general, De Villars.