?'

'Oh, we shall have her mild as a sheep.' (Eustacie set her teeth.)
'Every one will be in the same story, that her marriage was a nullity;
she cannot choose but believe, and can only be thankful that we overlook
the escapade and rehabilitate her.'

'Thank you, my good uncle,' almost uttered his unseen auditor.

'Well! There is too much land down here to throw away; but the affair
has become horribly complicated and distasteful.'

'No such thing. All the easier. She can no longer play the spotless
saint--get weak-minded priests on her side--be all for strict convents.
No, no; her time for that is past! Shut her up with trustworthy persons
from whom she will hear nothing from without, and she will understand
her case. The child? It will scarce be born alive, or at any rate she
need not know whether it is. Then, with no resource, no hope, what can
she do but be too thankful for pardon, and as glad to conceal the past
as we could wish?'

Eustacie clenched her fist. Had a pistol been within her reach,
the speaker's tenure of life had been short! She was no chastened,
self-restrained, forgiving saint, the poor little thing, only a
hot-tempered, generous, keenly-sensitive being, well-nigh a child in
years and in impulses, though with the instincts of a mother awakening
within her, and of a mother who heard the life of her unborn babe
plotted against. She was absolutely forced to hold her lips together,
to repress the sobbing scream of fury that came to her throat; and the
struggles with her gasping breath, the surging of the blood in her ears,
hindered her from hearing or seeing anything for some seconds,
though she kept her station. By the time her perceptions had cleared
themselves, Martin, cap in hand, was in the lane below, listening
deferentially to the two gentlemen, who were assuring him that inquiry
had been made, and a guard carefully set at the fugitive could have
passed those, or be able to do so. She must certainly be hidden
somewhere near home, and Martin had better warn all his friends against
hiding her, unless they wished to be hung up on the thresholds of their
burning farm-steads. Martin bowed, and thought the fellows would know
their own interest and Mademoiselle's better.

'Well,' said the Chevalier, 'we must begin without loss of time. My son
has brought down a set of fellows here, who are trained to ferret out
heretics. Not a runaway weasel cold escape them! We will set them on as
soon as ever t