Odette de Villeneuve's breath came a little quickly, a fine dew stood on her white forehead. Meantime the Duke watched her and wondered in an enthusiasm of piety what prayer it was that so stirred that angelic breast, what aspirations for the good of her sinning and suffering sisters swelled that saintly bosom! A vision of an ascetic life spent by her side, of Fathers read page by page in her company, of the good and the noble pursued with her under cloistered yews, of an Order such as the modern Church had never seen--such a vision wrapt him for a few blissful minutes from the cold, lower world of sense.
CHAPTER XV.
[FEARS.]
The Abbess was not present that evening when the hostages transferred themselves to the peasants' side of the camp. Had she witnessed the scene she had found, it is possible, matter for reflection. Hard as he had struggled against the surrender, the Lieutenant struggled almost as hard, now it was inevitable, to put a good face on it. But his easy word and laugh fell flat in face of a crowd so watchful and so ominously silent that it was useless to pretend that the step was no more than a change from a hut in this part to a hut in that. He who knew that he must, in the morning, face the men and deny them their prisoner--knew this too well. But, in truth, the downcast faces of his troopers and the furtive glances of the Vicomte's party were evidence that the matter meant much, and that these, also, recognised it; nor did the peasants, who fell in beside the two when they started, and accompanied them in an ever growing mob, seem unaware of the fact. The movement was their triumph; a sign of victory to the dullest as he ran and stared, and ran again. A section indeed there were who stood aloof and eyed the thing askance: but two of the Vicomte's party, who recognised among these the men whom the Lieutenant had denounced in the morning--the tall, light-eyed fanatic and the dwarf--held it the worst sign of all; and had it lain in their power they would even at that late hour have called back their friends.
Those two were Roger and his younger sister. With what feelings they saw des Ageaux and the Countess ride away to share a solitude full alike of danger and of alarm may be more easily imagined than described. But this is certain; whatever pangs of jealousy gnawed at Bonne's heart or reddened her brother's cheek, neither forgot the bargain they had made on the hill-side, or wished their rival aught but a safe deliverance.
As it was, could the one or the other, by the lifting of a finger, have injured the person who stood in the way, they had not lifted it or desired to lift it. But--to be in her place! To be in his place! To share that solitude and that peril! To know that round them lay half a thousand savages, ready at the first sign of treachery to take their lives, and yet to know that to the other it was bliss to be there--this, to the two who remained in the Vicomte's huts and gave their fancy rein, seemed happiness. Yet were they sorely anxious; anxious in view of the abiding risk of such a situation, more anxious in view of the crisis that must come when the peasants learned that the prisoner had escaped. Nevertheless, they did not talk of this, even to one another.
If Roger kept vigil that night his sister did not know it. And if Bonne, whose secret was her own, started and trembled at every sound--and such a camp as that bred many a sound and some alarming ones--she told no one. But when the first grey light fell thin on the basin in the hills, disclosing here the shapeless mass of a hut, and there only the dark background of the encircling ridge, her pale face, as she peered from her lodging, confronted Roger's as he paced the turf outside. The same thought, the same fear was in the mind of brother and sister, and had been since earliest cock-crow; and for Roger's part he was not slow to confess it. Presently they found that there was another whom care kept waking. A moment and the Bat's lank form loomed through the mist. He found the two standing side by side; and the old soldier's heart warmed to them. He nodded his comprehension.
"The trouble will not be yet awhile," he said. "He will send the lady back before he tells them. I doubt"--he shrugged his shoulders with a glance at Bonne--"if she has had a bed of roses this night."
Bonne sighed involuntarily. "At what hour do you think she will be back?" Roger asked.
"My orders are to send six riders for her half an hour after sunrise."