p
fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver
candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed
curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within;
and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here
forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed
with shot and sown with mortar.

"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.

"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le
Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the
loss of half his face."

"Where is Madame La Tour?"

"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in
the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise
into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay
will try to encompass the fort to-night."

"And what business took thee into the turret?"

"Your highness"--

"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.

--"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without
accepting correction. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He
needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does
D'Aulnay."

Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Zelie's
attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of
disapproval,--

"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"

"Not Zelie, your highness"--

"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.

"That heavy-foot Zelie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine
bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Zelie is
laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook
through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild
fowl eggs in store."

"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the
irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her
if she neglects her rightful duties."

Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.

"Yes, your highness"--

"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was
forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.

"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress
before Madame Bronck went away?"

"What of her?"

"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."

"It is Zelie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging
brevity. Le Rossignol dropped