"Of course, if Madame--if Madame knows nothing of the monk," he said, looking vacantly about the dirty room, "it is clear that--it seems clear that there has been a mistake."

"And only one thing remains to be done," I suggested.

"But--but," he continued, with a resumption of his former importance, "there is still one point unexplained--that of the red cockade, Monsieur? What of that, M. le Vicomte?"

"The red cockade?" I said.

"Ay, what of that?" he asked briskly.

I had not expected this, and I looked desperately at Madame. Surely her woman's wit would find a way, whatever the cockade meant. "Have you asked Madame CorrÉas?" I said at last, feebly shifting the burden. "Have you asked her to explain it?"

"No," he answered.

"Then I would ask her," I said.

"Nay, do not ask me; ask M. le Vicomte," she answered lightly. "Ask him of what colour are the facings of the National Guards of Quercy?"

"Red!" I cried, in a burst of relief. "Red!" I knew, for had I not seen Buton's coat lying by the forge? But how Madame de St. Alais knew I have no idea.

"Ah!" M. Flandre said, with the air of one still a little doubtful. "And Madame wears the cockade for that reason?"

"No, M. le Maire," she answered, with a roguish smile; I saw that it was her plan to humour him. "I do not--my daughter does. If you wish to ask further, or the reason, you must ask her."

M. Flandre had the curiosity of the true bourgeois, and the love of the sex. He simpered. "If Mademoiselle would be so good," he said.

Denise had remained up to this point hidden behind her mother, but at the word she crept out, and reluctantly and like a prisoner brought to the bar, stood before us. It was only when she spoke, however, nay, it was not until she had spoken some words that I understood the full change that I saw in her; or why, instead of the picture of pallid weariness which she had presented a few minutes before, she now showed, as she stood forward, a face covered with blushes, and eyes shining and suffused.

"It is simple, Monsieur," she said in a low voice. "My fiancÉ, M. le Maire, is in that regiment."

"And you wear it for that reason?" the Mayor cried, delighted.

"I love him," she said softly. And for a moment--for a moment her eyes met mine.

Then I know not which was the redder, she or I; or which found that vile and filthy room more like a palace, its tobacco-laden air more sweet! I had not dreamed what she was going to say, least of all had I dreamed what her eyes said, as for that instant they met mine and turned my blood to fire! I lost the Mayor's blunt answer and his chuckling laugh; and only returned to a sense of the present when Mademoiselle slipped back to hide her burning face behind her mother, and I saw in her place Madame, facing me, with her finger to her lip, and a glance of warning in her eyes.

It was a warning not superfluous, for in the flush of my first enthusiasm I might have said anything. And the Mayor was in better hands than mine. The little touch of romance and sentiment which Mademoiselle's avowal had imported into the matter, had removed his last suspicion and won his heart. He ogled Madame, he beamed on the girl with fatherly gallantry. He made a jest of the monk.

"A mistake, and yet one I cannot deplore, Madame," he protested, with clumsy civility. "For it has given me the pleasure of seeing you."

"Oh, M. le Maire!" Madame simpered.

"But the state of the country is really such," he continued, "that for the beautiful sex to be travelling alone is not safe. It exposes them----"

"To worse rencontres than this, I fear," Madame said, darting a look from her fine eyes. "If this were the worst we poor women had to fear!" And she looked at him again.

"Ah, Madame!" he said, delighted.

"But, alas, we have no escort."

The fat Mayor sighed, I think that he was going to offer himself. Then a thought struck him. "Perhaps this gentleman," and he turned to me. "You go to NÎmes, M. le Vicomte?"

"Yes," I said. "And, of course, if Madame CorrÉas----"

"Oh, it would be troubling M. le Vicomte," Madame said; and she went a step farther from me and a step nearer to M. Flandre, as if he must understand her hesitation.

"I am sure it could be no trouble to any one!" he answered stoutly. "But for the matter of that, if M. le Vicomte perceives any difficulty," and he laid his hand on his heart, "I will find some one----"

"Some one?" Madame said archly.

"Myself," the Mayor answered.

"Ah!" she cried, "if you----"

But I thought that now I might safely step in. "No, no," I said. "M. le Maire is taking all against me. I can assure you, Madame, I shall be glad to be of service to you. And our roads lie together. If, therefore----"

"I shall be grateful," Madame answered with a delightful little courtesy. "That is, if M. le Maire will let out his poor prisoners. Who, as he now knows, have done nothing worse than sympathise with National Guards."

"I will take it on myself, Madame," M. Flandre said, with vast importance. He had been brought to the desired point. "The case is quite clear. But----" he paused and coughed slightly, "to avoid complications, you had better leave early. When you are gone, I shall know what explanations to give. And if you would not object to spending the night here," he continued, looking round him, with a touch of sheepishness, "I think that----"

"We shall mind it less than before," Madame said, with a look and a sigh. "I feel safe since you have been to see us." And she held out a hand that was still white and plump.

The Mayor kissed it.

* * * * *

As I walked, a few minutes later, across the square, picking my steps by the yellow light of M. Flandre's lantern, and at times enveloped in the flying skirt of his cloak--for the good man had his own visions and for a hundred yards together forgot his company--I could have thought all that had passed a dream; so unreal seemed the squalid prison-lodging I had just left, so marvellous the ladies' presence in it, so incredible Mademoiselle's blushing avowal made to my face. But a wheezing clock overhead struck the hour before midnight, and I counted the strokes; a watchman, not far from me, cried, after the old fashion, that it was eleven o'clock and a fine night; and I stumbled over a stone. No, I was not dreaming.

But if I had to stumble then, to persuade myself that I was awake, how was it with me next morning, when, with the first glimmer of light, I walked beside the carriage from the inn to the prison, and saw, before I reached the gloomy door, Madame and Mademoiselle standing shivering under the wall beside it? How was it with me when I held Mademoiselle's hand in mine, as I helped her in, and then followed her in and sat opposite to her--sat opposite to her with the knowledge that I was so to sit for days, that I was to be her fellow-traveller, that we were to go to NÎmes together?

Ah, how was it, indeed? But there is nothing quite perfect; there is no hour in which a man says that he is quite happy; and a shadow of fear and stealth darkened my bliss that morning. The Mayor was there to see us start, and I fancy that it was his face of apprehension that lay at the bottom of this feeling. A moment, however, and the face was gone from the window; another, and the carriage began to roll quickly through the dim streets, while we lay back, each in a corner, hidden by the darkness even from one another. Still, we had the gates to pass, and the guard; or the watch might stop us, or some early-rising townsman, or any one of a hundred accidents. My heart beat fast.

But all went well. Within five minutes we had passed the gates and left them behind us, and were rolling in safety along the road. The dawn was no more than grey, the trees showed black against the sky, as we crossed the Tarn by the great bridge, and began to climb the valley of the Dourbie.

I have said that we could not see one another. But on a sudden Madame laughed out of the darkness of her corner. "O Richard, O mon Roi!" she hummed. Then "The fat fool!" she cried; and she laughed again.

I thought her cruel, and almost an ingrate; but she was Mademoiselle's mother, and I said nothing. Mademoiselle was opposite to me, and I was happy. I was happy, thinking what she would say to me, and how she would look at me, when the day came and she could no longer escape my eyes; when the day came and the dainty, half-shrouded face that already began to glimmer in the roomy corner of the old berlin should be mine to look on, to feast my eyes on, to question and read through long days and hours of a journey, a journey through heaven!

Already it was growing light; I had but a little longer to wait. A rosy flush began to tinge one half the sky; the other half, pale blue and flecked with golden clouds, lay behind us. A few seconds, and the mountain tips caught the first rays of the sun, and floated far over us, in golden ether. I cast one greedy glance at Mademoiselle's face, saw there the dawn out-blushed, I met for one second her eyes and saw the glory of the ether outshone--and then I looked away, trembling. It seemed sacrilege to look longer.

Suddenly Madame laughed again, out of her corner; a laugh that made me wince, and grow hot. "She is not made for a nun, M. le Vicomte, is she?" she said.

I bounced in my seat. The speaker's tone, gay, insulting, flicked, not me, but the girl, like a whip.

"You really, Denise, must have had practice," Madame continued smoothly. "I love, you love, we love--you are quite perfect. Did you practise with M. le Directeur? Or with the big boys over the wall?"

"Madame!" I cried. The girl had drawn her hood over her face, but I could fancy her shame.

But Madame was inexorable. "Really, Denise, I do not know that I ever told even your father 'I love you,'" she said. "At any rate, until he had kissed me on the lips. But I suppose that you reverse the order----"

"Madame," I stammered. "This is infamous!"

"What, Monsieur?" she answered, this time heeding me. "May I not punish my daughter in my own way?"

"Not before me," I retorted, full of wrath. "It is cruel! It is----"

"Oh, before you, M. le Vicomte?" Madame answered, mocking me. "And why not before you? I cannot degrade her lower than she has herself stooped!"

"It is false!" I cried, in hot rage. "It is a cruel falsehood!"

"Oh, I can? Then if I please, I shall!" Madame answered, with ruthless pleasantry. "And you, Monsieur, will sit by and listen, if I please. Though, make no mistake, M. le Vicomte," she continued, leaning forward, and gazing keenly into my face. "Because I punish her before you, do not think that you are, or ever shall be, of the family. Or that this unmaidenly, immodest----"

Mademoiselle uttered a cry of pain, and shrank lower in her corner.

"Little fool," Madame continued coolly, "who, when she was primed with a cock-and-bull story about the cockade, must needs add, 'I love him'--I love him, and she a maiden!--will ever be anything to you! That link was broken long ago. It was broken when your friends burned our house at St. Alais; it was broken when they sacked our house in Cahors; it was broken when they made our king a prisoner, when they murdered our friends, when they dragged our Church a slave at the chariot wheels of their triumph; ay, and broken once for all, beyond mending by mock heroics! Understand that fully, M. le Vicomte," Madame continued pitilessly. "But as you saw her stoop, you shall see her punished. She is the first St. Alais that ever wooed a lover!"

I knew that of the family which would have given the lie to that statement; but it was not a tale for Mademoiselle's ears, and instead I rose. "At least, Madame," I said, bowing, "I can free Mademoiselle from the embarrassment of my presence. And I shall do so."

"No, you will not do even that," Madame answered unmoved. "If you will sit down, I will tell you why."

I sat down, compelled by her tone.

"You will not do it," Madame continued, looking me coolly in the face, "because I am bound to admit, though I no longer like you, that you are a gentleman."

"And therefore should leave you."

"On the contrary, for that reason you will continue to travel with us."

"Outside," I said.

"No, inside," she answered quietly. "We have no passport nor papers; without your company we should be stopped in each town through which we pass. It is unfortunate," Madame continued, shrugging her shoulders; "--I did not know that the country was in so bad a state, or I would have taken precautions--it is unfortunate. But as it is we must put up with it and travel together."

I felt a warm rush of joy, of triumph, of coming vengeance. "Thank you, Madame," I said, and I bowed to her, "for telling me that. It seems, then, that you are in my power."

"Ah?"

"And that to requite you for the pain you have just caused Mademoiselle, I have only to leave you."

"Well?"

"I see even now a little town before us; in three minutes we shall enter it. Very well, Madame. If you say another word to your daughter, if you insult her again in my presence by so much as a syllable, I leave you and go my way."

To my surprise Madame St. Alais broke into a silvery laugh. "You will not, Monsieur," she said. "And yet I shall treat my daughter as I please."

"I shall do so!"

"You will not."

"Why, then? Why shall I not?" I cried.

"Because," she answered, laughing softly, "you are a gentleman, M. le Vicomte, and can neither leave us nor endanger us. That is all."

I sank back in my seat, and glared at her in speechless indignation; seeing in a flash my impotence and her power. The cushions burned me; but I could not leave them.

She laughed again, well pleased. "There, I have told you what you will not do," she said. "Now I am going to tell you what you will do. In front, I am told, they are very suspicious. The story of Madame Corvas, even if backed by your word, may not suffice. You will say, therefore, that I am your mother, and that Mademoiselle is your sister. She would prefer, I daresay," Madame continued, with a cutting glance at her daughter, "to pass for your wife. But that does not suit me."

I breathed hard; but I was helpless as any prisoner, closely bound to obedience as any slave. I could not denounce them, and I could not leave them; honour and love were alike concerned. Yet I foresaw that I must listen, hour by hour, and mile by mile, to gibes at the girl's expense, to sneers at her modesty, to words that cut like whip-lashes. That was Madame's plan. The girl must travel with me, must breathe the same air with me, must sit for hours with the hem of her skirt touching my boot. It was necessary for the safety of all. But, after this, after what we had both heard, if her eye met mine, it could only fall; if her hand touched mine, she must shrink in shame. Henceforth there was a barrier between us.

As a fact, Mademoiselle's pride came to her aid, and she sat, neither weeping nor protesting, nor seeking to join her forces to mine by a glance; but bearing all with steadfast patience, she looked out of the window when I pretended to sleep, and looked towards her mother when I sat erect. Possibly she found her compensations, and bore her punishment quietly for their sake. But I did not think of that. Possibly, too, she suffered less than I fancied; but I doubt if she would admit that, even to-day.

At any rate she had heard me fight her battle; yet she did not speak to me nor I to her; and under these strange conditions we began and pursued the strangest journey man ever made. We drove through pleasant valleys growing green, over sterile passes, where winter still fringed the rocks with snow, through sunshine, and in the teeth of cold mountain winds; but we scarcely heeded any of these things. Our hearts and thoughts lay inside the carriage, where Madame sat smiling, and we two kept grim silence.

About noon we halted to rest and eat at a little village inn, high up. It seemed to me a place almost at the end of the world, with a chaos of mountains rising tier on tier above it, and slopes of shale below. But the frenzy of the time had reached even this barren nook. Before we had taken two mouthfuls, the Syndic called to see our papers; and--God knows I had no choice--Madame passed for my mother, and Denise for my sister. Then, while the Syndic still stood bowing over my commission, and striving to learn from me what news there was below, a horse halted at the door, and I heard a man's voice, and in a breath M. le Baron de GÉol walked in. There was a single decent room in the inn--that in which we sat--and he came into it.

He uncovered, seeing ladies; and recognising me with a start smiled, but a trifle sourly. "You set off early?" he said. "I waited at the east gate, but you did not come, Monsieur."

I coloured, conscience-stricken, and begged a thousand pardons. As a fact, I had clean forgotten him. I had not once thought of the appointment I had made with him at the gate.

"You are not riding?" he said, looking at my companions a little strangely.

"No," I answered. And I could not find another word to say. The Syndic still stood smiling and bowing beside me; and on a sudden I saw the pit on the edge of which I tottered; and my face burned.

"You have met friends?" M. le Baron persisted, looking, hat in hand, at Madame.

"Yes," I muttered. Politeness required that I should introduce him. But I dared not.

However, at that, he at last took the hint; and retired with the Syndic. The moment they were over the threshold Madame flashed out at me, in a passion of anger. "Fool!" she said, without ceremony, "why did you not present him? Don't you know that that is the way to arouse suspicion, and ruin us? A child could see that you had something to hide. If you had presented him at once to your mother----"

"Yes, Madame?"

"He would have gone away satisfied."

"I doubt it, Madame, and for a very good reason," I answered cynically. "Seeing that yesterday I told him, with the utmost particularity, that I had neither mother nor sister."

That afforded me a little revenge. Madame St. Alais went white and red in the same instant, and sat a moment with her lips pressed together, and her eyes on the table. "Who is he? What do you know of him?" she said at last.

"He is a poor gentleman and a bigoted Protestant," I answered drily.

She bit her lip. "Bon Dieu!" she muttered. "Who could have foreseen such an accident? Do you think that he suspects anything?"

"Doubtless. To begin, I left early this morning, in breach of an agreement to travel with him. When he learns, in addition, that I am travelling with my mother and sister, whom yesterday I did not possess----"

Madame looked at me, as if she would strike me. "What will you do?" she cried.

"It is for my mother to say," I answered politely. And I helped myself very indifferently to cheese. "She dictated this policy."

She was white with rage, and perhaps alarm; I chuckled secretly, seeing her condition. But rage availed her little; she had to humble herself. "What do you advise?" she said at last.

"There is only one course open," I answered. "We must brazen it out."

She agreed. But this, though a very easy course to advise, was one anything but easy to pursue. I discovered that, a few minutes later, when I went out to see if the carriage was ready, and found De GÉol in the doorway with a face as hard as his own hills. "You are starting?" he said.

I muttered that I was.

"I find that I have to congratulate you," he continued, with a smile of unpleasant meaning.

"On what, Monsieur?"

"On finding your family," he answered, looking at me with a bitter sort of humour. "To discover both a mother and a sister in twenty-four hours must be great happiness. But--may I give you a hint, M. le Vicomte?"

"If you please," I said, with desperate coolness.

"Then if--being so happy in making discoveries--you happen to light next on M. Froment--on M. Froment, the firebrand of NÎmes, false Capuchin, and false traitor!--do not adopt him also! That is all."

"I am not acquainted with him," I said coldly. He had spoken with passion and fire.

"Do not become so," he answered.

I shrugged my shoulders, and he said no more; and in a moment Madame and Mademoiselle came out, and took their seats, and I set out to walk up the hill beside the horses.

The ascent was steep and long and toilsome, and a dozen times as we climbed out of the valley we had to halt to breathe the cattle; a dozen times I looked back at the grey mountain inn lying on the desolate grey plateau at our feet. Always I found the Baron looking up at us, stern and gaunt and motionless as the house before which he stood. And I shivered.