An hour later the Lieutenant was with the Duke in his quarters, and had imparted to him what he knew of the position. The Duke listened, not much affected; nay, with something approaching indifference.

"It is a question of four days then?" he rejoined, as he painfully moved himself on his litter. They had made him as comfortable as they could, screening the head of his couch, which was towards the hut door, with a screen of wattle. Against one wall, if wall that could be called which was of like make with the screen, ran a low bench of green turves, and on this des Ageaux was seated.

"Of four days--and nights," the Lieutenant made answer, masking a slight shiver. He was not thinking of his own position, but of the young Countess; neither her fears nor the courage with which she controlled them were a secret from him. "To-day is Saturday. The Countess's men should be here by Monday, your men, M. de Joyeuse, by Wednesday. All will be well then; and I doubt not with such support we can handle the Captain of Vlaye. But until then we run a double risk."

"Of Vlaye, of course."

"And of our own people if anything occur to exasperate them."

Joyeuse laughed recklessly. "Vogue la galère!" he cried. "The plot grows thicker. I came for adventure, and I have it. Ah, man, if you had lived within the four walls of a convent!"

Des Ageaux shook his head. He knew the wanton courage of the man, who, sick and helpless, found joy in the peril that surrounded them. But he was very far from sharing the feeling. The dangers that threatened the party lay heavy on the man who was responsible for all. The tremors of the young girl who must share his risk that evening, the bitter reproaches of the Abbess and her father, even the confidence that Bonne's eyes rather than her lips avowed, all tormented him; so that to see this man revelling in that which troubled him so sorely, insulted his reason.

"I fancy, my lord," he said, a faint note of resentment in his tone, "if you had had to face these rogues this morning you had been less confident this evening."

"Were they so spiteful?" The Duke raised himself on his elbow. "Well, I say again, you made a mistake. You should have run the spokesman through the throat! Ca! Sa!" He made a pass through the air. "And trust me, the rest of the knaves----"

"Might have left none of us alive to tell the tale!" the Lieutenant retorted.

"I don't know that!"

"But I suspect it!" des Ageaux replied warmly. "And I do beg you, my lord, to be guided in this. I am more than grateful for the impulse which led you to come to my assistance. But honestly I had been more glad if you had brought a couple of hundred spears with you. As it is, the least imprudence may cost us more than our own lives! And it behoves us all to remember that!"

"The least imprudence!"

"Certainly."

The Duke laughed softly--at nothing that appeared. "So!" he said. "The least imprudence may destroy us, may it? The least imprudence!" And then, suddenly sobered, he fixed his eyes on the Lieutenant. "But what of letting your prisoner go, eh? What of that? Was not that an imprudence, most wise Solomon?"

"A very great one!" des Ageaux replied with a sigh.

"What shall you do when, to-morrow morning, they claim his trial?"

"What I can," the Lieutenant answered, frowning and sitting more erect. "See that the Countess returns early to this side; where the Bat must make the best dispositions he can for your safety. Meanwhile, I shall tell them and make them see reason if I can!"

"Lord!" the Duke said with genuine gusto, "I wish I were in your place!"

"I wish you were," des Ageaux replied. "And still more that I had the rogue by the leg again."

"Do you?"

"Do I?" the Lieutenant repeated in astonishment. "I do indeed. The odds are they will maintain that we released him on purpose, and dearly we may pay for it!"

For a moment the Duke, flat on his back, looked thoughtful. Then, "Umph!" he said, "you think so? But you were always a croaker, des Ageaux, and you are making the worst of it! Still--you would like to lay your hand on him, would you?"

"I would indeed!"

The Duke rose on his elbow. "Would you mind giving me--I am a little cold--that cloak?" he said. "No," as des Ageaux moved to do it, "not that one under your hand--the small one! Thank you. I----"

He could not finish. He was shaking with laughter--which he vainly tried to repress. Des Ageaux stared. And then, "What have I done to amuse you so much, my lord?" he asked coldly, as he rose.

"Much and little," the Duke answered, still shaking.

"Much or little," des Ageaux retorted, "you will do yourself no good by laughing so violently. If your wound, my lord, sets to bleeding again----"

"Pray for the soul of Henry, Duke of Joyeuse, Count of Bouchage!" the Duke replied lightly. Yet on the instant, and by a transition so abrupt as to sound incredible to men of these days, he composed his face, groped for his rosary, and began to say his offices. The suddenness of the change, the fervour of his manner, the earnestness of his voice astonished the Lieutenant, intimately as he knew this strange man. Awhile he waited, then he rose and made for the door.

But Joyeuse--not the Duke of three minutes before, but Frère Ange of the Capuchin convent--stopped him with a movement of his eyes. "And why not," said he, "to-day as well as to-morrow? No man need be afraid to die who prepares himself. The soldier above all, Lieutenant, for the true secret of courage is to repent. Ay, to repent," he continued in a voice, sweet and thrilling, and with a look in his eyes strangely gentle and compelling. "Friend, are you prepared? Have you confessed lately? If not, kneel down! Kneel, man, and let us say a dozen aves, and a couple of Paternosters! It will be no time wasted," he continued anxiously. "No man has sinned more than I have. No man, no man! Yet I face death like one in a thousand! And why? Why, man? Because it is not I, but----"

But there are things too high for the level of such narrations as this, and too grave for such treatment as is here essayed. The character of this man was so abnormal, he played with so much enthusiasm his alternate r?les, that without this passing glimpse of his rarer side--that side which in the intervals of wild revelry led him to dying beds and sick men's couches--but one-half of him could be understood. Not that he was quite alone in the possession of this trait. It was a characteristic of the age to combine the most flagrant sins with the strictest observances; and a few like M. de Joyeuse added to both a real, if intermittent and hysterical, repentance.

On this occasion it was not long before he showed his other face. The Abbess, after waiting without and fretting much--for she had returned to the purpose momentarily abandoned, and the length of the interview alarmed her--won entrance at last. She exchanged a cold greeting with the departing Lieutenant, then took his place, book in hand, on the green bench. For a while there was silence. She had so far played her part with success. The Duke knew not whether to call her saint or woman; and that he might remain in that doubt she now left it to him to speak. At the same time she left him at liberty to look: for she knew that bending thus at her devotions she must appear more striking to his jaded senses. And he, for a time, was mute also, and thoughtful; so much he gave to the scene just ended.

It is possible that the silence was prolonged by the chance of considering her at leisure which she was careful to afford him. He was still weak, the better side of him was still uppermost; and handsome as she was, he saw her through a medium of his own, in a halo of meekness and goodness and purity. Thus viewed she fell in with his higher mood, she was a part of it, she prolonged it. A time would come, would most certainly come, when one of the wildest libertines of his day would see her otherwise, and in the woman forget the saint. But it had not yet come. And the Abbess, with her pure, cold profile, bent over her book, and, with her thoughts apparently in heaven, knew also that her time had not yet come.

Though her face betrayed nothing, she was in an angry mood. She had gained little by the altercation with des Ageaux; and though the simplicity which he had betrayed in his dealings with the peasants excited her boundless contempt--he, to pit himself against M. de Vlaye!--the peril which it brought upon all heightened that contempt to anger. If the peril had been his only, or included the Countess only, if it had threatened those only whom she could so well spare, and towards whose undoing her brain was busily working, she could have borne it bravely and gaily.

But the case was far other; and something she regretted that she had not bowed to her first impulse in the chapel and called to M. de Vlaye, and gone to him--ay, gone to him empty-handed as she was, without the triumph of which she had dreamed. For the jeopardy in which she and all her family now stood put her in a dilemma. If the Lieutenant kept faith with the peasants and all went well, it would go ill with her lover. If, on the contrary, M. des Ageaux failed to restrain the peasants, it might go ill with herself.

It came always to this: she must win over the Duke. Of the allies against Vlaye, he, with his hundred and fifty horse, due to arrive on the Wednesday, with the larger support which he could summon if it were necessary, and with his favour at Court, was by far the most formidable. Detach him, and the Lieutenant with his handful of riders, backed though he might be by the Countess's men, and the peasant rout would be very likely to fail. It came back then always to this: she must win the Duke. As she pondered, with her eyes on her book, as she considered again and anew this resolution, the noises of the camp, the Bat's sharp word of command--for he had fallen imperturbably to drilling as if that were the one thing necessary--the Vicomte's querulous voice, and the more distant babel of the peasants' qu............