An age, it seemed to her, she lay in this state, cold, paralysed, without hope. Then a word caught her ear and fixed her attention.
"They have been away two hours," Joyeuse muttered, speaking low to the Vicomte. "They should be back."
"What could they do?" the Vicomte answered in a tone of despair.
"Forty swords can do much," Joyeuse answered hardily. "Were I sound I should know what to do. And that right well!"
"They started too late."
"The greater reason they should be back! Were all over they would be back."
"I have no hope."
"I have. Had they desired to kill them only," the Duke continued with reason, "the brutes had done it here, in a moment! If they did not hope to use them why carry them off?"
But the Vicomte with a quivering lip shook his head. He was still thinking--with marvellous unselfishness for him--of the daughter who had borne with him so long and so patiently. For des Ageaux there might be hope and a chance. But a woman in the hands of savages such as those he had seen in the town on the hill! He shuddered as he thought of it. Better death, better death a hundred times than that. He did not wish to see her again.
But in one heart the mention of hope had awakened hope. The Abbess raised herself on her elbow. "Who have gone?" she asked in a voice so hollow and changed they started as at the voice of a stranger. "Who are gone?" she repeated.