'Do you think he has really seen him?' she whispered. We both stood with our eyes on him.
'I fear so, my lady,' I said with reluctance.
'But it would cost him his life,' she muttered eagerly, 'if he were found here!'
'He is a bold man,' I answered.
'Ah! so was he--once,' she replied in a peculiar tone, and she pointed stealthily to the unconscious man in the window. 'A month ago he would have taken him by the throat anywhere. What has come to him?'
'God knows,' I answered reverently. 'Grant only he may do us no harm!'
He turned round at that, humming gaily, and went out, seeming almost unconscious of our presence; and I made as light of the matter to my lady as I could. But Tzerclas in the city, the Waldgrave mad, or at any rate not sane, and last, but not least, the strange light in which the latter chose to regard the former, were circumstances I could not easily digest. They filled me with uneasy fears and surmises. I began to perambulate the crowd, seeking furtively for a face; and was entirely determined what I would do if I found it. The town was full, as all besieged cities are, of rumours of spies and treachery, and of reported overtures made now to the city behind the back of the army, and now to the army to betray the city. A single word of denunciation, and Tzerclas' life would not be worth three minutes' purchase--a rope and the nearest butcher's hook would end it. My mind was made up to say the word.
I suppose I had been going about in this state of vigilance three days or more, when something, but not the thing I sought, rewarded it. At the time I was on my way back from morning drill. It was a little after eight, and the streets and the people wore an air bright, yet haggard. Night, with its perils, was over; day, with its privations, lay before us. My mind was on the common fortunes, but I suppose my eyes were mechanically doing their work, for on a sudden I saw something at a window, took perhaps half a step, and stopped as if I had been shot.
I had seen Marie's face! Nay, I still saw it, while a man might count two. Then it was gone. And I stood gasping.
I suppose I stood so for half a minute, waiting, with the blood racing from my heart to my head, and every pulse in my body beating. But she did not reappear. The door of the house did not open. Nothing happened.