“Papa, papa, speak to me!” she cried; “speak to me, papa!”
Madame Dupré, who had just fastened up her last shutter, heard it, and rushed to the door—then ran back again and dragged Baptiste out of bed in his first sleep.
“L’Anglais!—something has happened to l’Anglais,” she said.
And then by degrees one house after another woke, and eager heads peered forth at the doors and windows. Baptiste, rushing across the road half dressed, with Auguste at his heels, was called to from one side and another in a dozen startled voices.
“What is it? What has happened?” they all asked breathless. He answered only by repeating what his mother had told him.
“L’Anglais—something has happened to l’Anglais,” Baptiste said.
Two men were coming down the road from the château. It was not much more than ten o’clock, and Sir John had come out with Charley, much against the will of the latter, to smoke his cigar.
“I’ll take a turn with you,” the baronet had said. “It’s muggy to-night, with all those trees about. If you had hit it off with Thérèse, Charley, I’d have advised you to thin these woods. But it’s no use thinking about that. What an odd piece of luck, however, that you should have found this Miss—Miss——”
“Helen,” said Ashton, with a bitterness he could scarcely restrain. Rather this familiarity than to speak of her by a false name.
“Miss—Helen—that’s it. Cécile never says the other name. You don’t say you know the father, Charley? I’d advise you to find out what sort of person he is, and all about him, before you go any farther, old man. It is queer that, just at the other one’s door, so to speak, you should have found this Miss—Helen.”