"Only these?"
"There were three more," he said. "But I found the doors unbarred, and the men gone. I am keeping this," he continued, with a dark glance at his pistol, "for one of them."
"Mademoiselle must go!" I said.
He shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened me. "How?" he asked.
"By the garden door."
"They are there. The house is surrounded."
I cried out at that in despair; and on the instant, as if to give point to his words, a furious blow fell on the great doors below, and awakening every echo in the house, proclaimed that the moment was come. A second shock followed; then a rain of blows. While the maids shrieked and clung to one another, I looked at Mademoiselle, and she at me.
"We must hide you," I muttered.
"No," she said.
"There must be some place," I said, looking round me desperately, and disregarding her answer. The noise of the blows was deafening. "In the----"