"There must be some room which will hide us," said I. "You know the way. Think, child; is there no such place?"
She did not answer me, but turned and led the way up the narrow flight of stairs by which she had appeared. Here was her bedroom.
We passed through it without delay and entered an oratory which lay at the head of a second flight of stairs immediately beyond. Here she shut a heavy door of oak and bolted it. The only light in the room flickered from a golden lamp before the altar, and as far as I could see there was no way out other than the door by which we had come in.
Now, this chapel was built in one of the eastern turrets of the house. I came to learn later that the owner of the place was Prince Boris, a man of some culture and of European notoriety, and that, while he was himself an orthodox Greek, he had permitted this use of a secret chapel to the young Frenchwoman who now knelt before its altar.
Wonderfully decorated in gold and silver, with rare pictures upon its walls and superb gems in the crucifixes above the tabernacle, the whole bore witness to a man of Catholic sympathies and abundant wealth. At any other time, no doubt, I would have made much of this hidden chapel and of its treasures; but the hour was not propitious, and, glad of its momentous security, I turned to the girl and would have questioned her. She, however, was already at her prayers, nor did she seem to hear me when I addressed her. A second question merely caused her to turn her head and cry, "Hush! they will hear us!" And so she went on praying—I doubt not for her dead brother's soul—while I paced up and down in as great a state of anger and of self-reproach as I had ever been in all my life.
What a situation for a surgeon-major of the Guards—to be locked up here in this puny chapel with a houseful of assassins below, and my own regiment not a stone's throw from the gate! And yet that was the truth of it, and anon I heard some of the robbers come leaping up the stairs, and presently they began to beat upon the door of the chapel, and I knew that they carried axes in their hands.
V
The sounds were deep and ominous, and might well have quelled a stronger spirit. The girl herself turned her head at the first blow, and then, staggering to her feet, she caught me by the arm and whispered her fears in my ear.
"They will beat it down," she said, indicating the door.
I answered that I thought it quite possible.