CHAPTER II
The Château Yvonne
It was night in the Château Yvonne.
The old house was unlighted and extraordinarily still. Now and then from the recesses of a vine-covered wall, a screech owl sounded his lament, while from the banks of a small lake nearby a company of frogs croaked their approval.
Otherwise the château appeared deserted, and in the moonlight one could see that portions of it were in ruins and that only the oldest part, which originally had been built of stone, remained intact.
Nevertheless, at present the old château was not uninhabited. It was now after midnight and a figure, carrying a candle, moved through the wide hall of the second floor. So silently the figure moved that unless one were listening intently, one would have heard no footfall.
The apparition was a woman, with her hair bound in two long braids, her figure slender and agile as a girl’s. Yet she had a look of courage, of hardly fought anxiety, which, together with her delicacy, held no suggestion of youth.
As she entered one of the bedrooms, one saw that she was not alone in the old house, two girls lay asleep in a large, old-fashioned French bedstead, a third girl in a cot nearby.
Their sleep must have been partly due to exhaustion, because as the light of the candle flickered across their faces, no one of them spoke or stirred.
A moment later, slipping as noiselessly into a second room, there was a faint movement from one of a pair of sleepers. A girl’s lips framed a question, but before the words were spoken the intruder had moved away.
Now she walked to the front of the house and stood before a tall French window whose shutters were tightly closed; through the slats came faint streaks of light.