Fortunately the Vicomte, whose hands were beginning to tremble, and whose colour was mounting to his wrinkled cheek, could not immediately find his voice. It was his elder daughter who took on herself to answer. "Where do you think, sir?" she cried gaily. "In your hay-meadows--so M. de Vlaye says."
"Mademoiselle de Rochechouart? In my hay-meadows?" the Vicomte faltered.
"Yes."
"In my hay-meadows? It cannot be."
"It is so--or so we are told."
CHAPTER VI.
[IN THE HAY-FIELD.]
The Vicomte gasped; it was evident, it was certain, that M. de Vlaye knew all. What was he to say, what to do? While Bonne, though her ear hung upon his reply, was conscious only of a desperate search, a wild groping, after some method of giving the alarm to those whom it concerned--to Charles lurking in the barn beside the water, to the Countess making hay for sport and thinking no evil. She had heard of a woman who in such a strait sent a feather which put quick wits on the alert. But she had no feather, she had nothing, and if she had, at her first word of withdrawing M. de Vlaye, she knew, would interpose. At last--
"It must be!" the Vicomte exclaimed, taking anew line with some presence of mind. "But I would not believe it!"
"It must be? what must be, sir?" his daughter Odette rejoined.