The Abbess Of Vlaye

She bent over her work to hide her face. "A duke gave them to you, I suppose?" she said.

"That is so," he replied sedately.

"Did you save his life?"

"I did not."

"I have heard," she returned, looking up thoughtfully, "that at Coutras a gentleman on the other side strove hard to save the Duke of Joyeuse's life, and did not desist until he was struck down by his own men."

"He looked to make his account by him, no doubt," the Lieutenant answered coldly. "Perhaps," with a scarcely perceptible bitterness, "the Duke, had he lived, would have given him-a pair of pistols!"

"That were a small return," she said indignantly, "for such a service!"

He shrugged his shoulders. And to change the subject-

"What are the grey ruins," he asked, "on the edge of the wood?"

"They are part of the old Abbey," she answered without looking up, "afterwards removed to Vlaye, of which my sister is Abbess. There was a time, I believe, when the convent stood so close to the house that it was well-nigh one with it. There was some disorder, I believe, and the Diocesan obtained leave to have it moved, and it was planted on lands that belonged to us at that time."

"Near Vlaye?"

"Within half a league of it."

"Your sister, then, is acquainted with the Captain of Vlaye?"

She did not look up. "Yes," she said.

"But you and your brothers?"

"We know him and hate him-only less than we fear him!" She regretted her vehemence the moment she had spoken.

But he merely nodded. "So do the Crocans, I fancy," he said. "It is rumoured that he is preparing something against them."

"You know that?" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Without being omniscient," he answered smiling. "I heard it in Barbesieux. It was that, perhaps," he continued shrewdly, "which you wished to tell your brother yesterday."

On that she was near confessing all to him and telling him, in spite of her resolutions, where on the next day he could find her brother. But she clung to her decision, and a minute later he rose and moved away in the direction of the house.

When they met at table the mystery of the Vicomte's sudden impulse to hospitality, which was something of a puzzle to her, began to clear.

It had its origin in nothing more substantial than his vanity; which was tickled by the opportunity of talking to a man who, with some pretensions to gentility, could be patronised. A little, too, he thought of the figure he had made the night before. It was possible that the stranger had been unfavourably impressed. That impression the Vicomte thought he must remove, and to that end he laboured, after his manner, to be courteous to his guest. But as his talk consisted, and had long consisted, of little but sneers and gibes at the companions of his fallen fortunes, his civility found its only vent in this direction.

Des Ageaux indeed would gladly have had less of his civility. More than once-though he was not fastidious-his cheek coloured with shame, and willingly would he, had that been all, have told the Vicomte what he thought of his witticisms. But he had his cards sorted, his course arranged. Circumstances had played for him in the dangerous game on which he was embarked, and he would have been unworldly indeed had he been willing to cast away, for a point of feeling-he who was no knight-errant-the advantages he had gained.

Not that he did not feel strongly for the two whose affection for one another touched him. Roger's deformity appealed to him, for he fancied that he detected in the lad a spirit which those who knew him better, but knew only his gentler side, did not suspect. And the girl who had grown from child to woman in the rustic stillness of this moated house-that once had rung with the tread of armed heels and been gay with festive robes and tourneys, but now was sinking fast into a lonely farmstead-she too awakened some interest in the man of the world, who smiled to find himself embedded for the time in a life so alien from his every-day experiences. Concern he felt for the one and the other; but such concern as weighed light in the balance against the interests he held in his hands, or even against his own selfish interest.

It soon appeared that the Vicomte had another motive for hospitality, in the desire to dazzle the stranger by the splendours of his eldest daughter, on whom he continued to harp. "There is still one of us," he said with senile vanity-"I doubt if, from the specimens you have seen, you will believe it-who is not entirely as God made her! Thank the Lord for that! Who is neither clod nor clout, sir, but has as much fashion as goes to the making of a modest gentlewoman."

His guest looked gravely at him. "I look forward much to seeing her, M. le Vicomte!" he said for the tenth time.

"Ay, you may say so!" the Vicomte answered. "For in her you will see a Villeneuve, and the last of the line!" with a scowl at Roger. "Neither a lout with his boots full of hay-seeds-pah! nor a sulky girl with as much manner as God gave her, and not a jot to it! Nice company I have, M. des Voeux," he continued bitterly. "Did you say des Voeux-I never heard the name?"

"Yes, M. le Vicomte."

"Nice company, I say, for a Villeneuve in his old age! What think you of it? Before Coutras, where was an end of the good old days, and the good old gentrice-"

"You were at Coutras?"

"Ay, to my cost, a curse on it! But before Coutras, I say, I had at least their mother, who was a Monclar from Rouergue. She had at any rate a tongue and could speak. And my daughter the Abbess takes after her, though may-be more after me, as you will think when you see her. She will be here, she says, to-morrow, for a night or two." This he told for the fifth time that evening.

"I am looking forward to seeing her!" the guest repeated gravely-also for the fifth time.

But the Vicomte could not have enough of boasting, which was doubly sweet to him; first because it exalted the absent, and secondly because it humiliated those who were present. "Thank God, she at least is not as God made her!" he said again, pleased with the phrase. "At Court last year the King noticed her, and swore she was a true Villeneuve, and a most perfect lady without fault or blemish!"

"His Majesty is certainly a judge," the listener responded, the twinkle in his eye more apparent than usual.

"To be sure!" the old man returned. "Who better? But, for the matter of that, I am a judge myself. My daughter-for there is only one worthy of the name" – with a withering glance at poor Bonne-"is not hand in glove with every base-born wench about the place, trapesing to a christening in a stable as readily as if the child were a king's son! Ay, and as I am a Catholic, praying beside old hags' beds till the lazy priest at the chapel has nought left to do for his month's meal! Pah!"

"Ranks are no doubt of God's invention," des Voeux said with his eyes on the table.

The Vicomte struck the board angrily. "Who doubts it?" he exclaimed. "Of God's invention, sir? Of course they are!"

"But I take it that they exist, in part at least," des Ageaux answered, "as a provision for the exercise of charity; and of-" he hesitated, unwilling-he read the gathering storm on the Vicomte's brow-to give offence; and, by a coincidence, he was saved from the necessity. As he paused the door flew open, and a serving-man, not one of the two who had waited on the table, but an uncouth creature, shaggy and field-stained, appeared gesticulating on the threshold. He was out of breath, apparently he could not speak; while the gust of wind which entered with him, by blowing sideways the long, straggling flames of the candles, and deepening the gloom of the ill-lit room, made it impossible to discern his face.

The Vicomte rose. They all rose. "What does this mean?" he cried in a rage. "What is it?"

"There's a party ringing at the gate, my lord, and-and won't take no!" the man gasped. "A half-dozen of spears, and others on foot and horse. A body of them. Solomon sent me to ask what's to do, and if he shall open."

"There's a petticoat with them," a second voice answered. The speaker showed his face over the other's shoulder.

"Imbeciles!" the Vicomte retorted, fired with rage. "It is your lady the Abbess come a day before her time! It is my daughter and you stay her at the door!"

"It is not my lady," the second man answered timidly. "It might be some of her company, my lord, but 'tis not her. And Solomon-"

"Well? Well?"

"Says that they are not her people, my lord."

The Vicomte groaned. "If I had a son worthy the name!" he said, and then he broke off, looking foolish. For Roger had left the room and des Ageaux also. They had slipped by the men while the Vicomte questioned them, and run out through the hall and to the gate-not unarmed. The Vicomte, seeing this, bade the men follow them; and when these too had vanished, and only four or five frightened women who had crowded into the room at the first alarm remained, he began to fumble with his sword, and to add to the confusion by calling fussily for this and that, and to bring him his arquebus, and not to open-not to open till he came! In truth years had worked imperceptibly on him. His nerves, like many things about him, were not what they had been-before Coutras. And he was still giving contrary directions, and scolding the women, and bidding them make way for him-since it seemed there was not a man to go to the gate but himself-when approaching voices broke on his ear and silenced him. An instant later one or two men appeared among the women in the doorway, and the little crowd fell back in wonder, to make room for a low dark man, bareheaded and breathing hard, with disordered hair and glittering eyes, who, thrusting the women to either side, cried-not once, but again, and yet again: -

"Room! Room for the Countess of Rochechouart! Way for the Countess!"

At the third repetition of this-which he seemed to say mechanically-his eyes took in the scene, the table, the room, and the waiting figure of the scandalized Vicomte, and his voice broke. "Saved!" he cried, flinging up his arms, and reeling slightly as if he would fall. "My lady is saved! Saved!"

And then, behind the low, dark man, who, it was plain, was almost beside himself, the Vicomte saw the white face and shrinking form of a small, slight girl little more than a child, whose eyes were like no eyes but a haunted hare's, so large and bright and affrighted were they.

CHAPTER IV.