So, when her eyes met Alec's, and she saw that questioning look in his face, she smiled at him with a radiant confidence that was astounding at such a moment.
"Heaven has been good to us, dear," she said. "Your soldiers are here. Your enemies are running away. Listen! they are fighting now on the stairs. The unhappy men who raved for our lives will lose their own. Can nothing be done to save them?"
He ran to the window. Those leaden blasts that had swept the room from the first floors of the opposite houses had ceased, and not one potvaliant marksman of them all was to be seen; but the street was full of hussars, and directly beneath, mounted on an excited horse, Stampoff was giving furious orders which evidently demanded an energetic storming of the hotel entrance.
Alec threw open the window and leaned out. "Just in time, old friend!" he cried.
Stampoff heard him and looked up. "God's bones!" he roared. "Here is the King safe and sound. At them, my children! Dig them out with your sabers! Don't leave a man alive!"
"Stop!" shouted Alec. "No more slaughter! I forbid it!"
Stampoff wheeled round on his charger and addressed the press of soldiers who had been unable to take any part in the street clearing, since the mob broke and fled when the first rank of plumed caps and flashing swords became visible.
"You hear, my children," he vociferated. "Don't harm anybody who does not resist. The King's commands must be obeyed."
Joan, of course, could only guess what was being said; but she could not fail to recognize the sounds of conflict on the stairs. Men are strangely akin to tigers when they see red, and the tiger's roar when he pounces on a victim differs greatly from his own death scream. Alec, powerless to move Stampoff, who believed, rightly, as it transpired, that the ringleaders were foremost in the attack, turned to Beaumanoir.
"Release that fellow," he said. "If I am able to make my voice heard through the racket, I can put an end to this butchery."