y retreat as effectually as if a door had been closed behind me.
But distrust and suspicion gave way the next moment to the natural
embarrassment of the man who finds himself in a false position and knows
he can escape from it only by an awkward explanation.

The room in which I found myself was long, narrow, and low in the
ceiling; and being hung with some dark stuff which swallowed up the
light, terminated funereally at the farther end in the still deeper
gloom of an alcove. Two or three huge chests, one bearing the remnants
of a meal, stood against the walls. The middle of the floor was covered
with a strip of coarse matting, on which a small table, a chair and
foot-rest, and a couple of stools had place, with some smaller articles
which lay scattered round a pair of half-filled saddle-bags. The
slighter and smaller of the two figures I had seen stood beside the
table, wearing a mask and riding cloak; and by her silent manner of
gazing at me, as well as by a cold, disdainful bearing, which neither
her mask nor cloak could hide, did more to chill and discomfit me than
even my own knowledge that I had lost the pass-key which should have
admitted me to her confidence.

The stouter figure of the afternoon turned out to be a red-cheeked,
sturdy woman of thirty, with bright black eyes and a manner which lost
nothing of its fierce impatience when she came a little later to address
me. All my ideas of Fanchette were upset by the appearance of this
woman, who, rustic in her speech and ways, seemed more like a duenna,
than the waiting-maid of a court beauty, and better fitted to guard a
wayward damsel than to aid her in such an escapade as we had in hand.

She stood slightly behind her mistress, her coarse red hand resting on
the back of the chair from which mademoiselle had apparently risen on my
entrance. For a few seconds, which seemed minutes to me, we stood gazing
at one another in silence, mademoiselle acknowledging my bow by a slight
movement of the head. Then, seeing that they waited for me to speak, I
did so.

'Mademoiselle de la Vire?' I murmured doubtfully.

She bent her head again; that was all.

I strove to speak with confidence. 'You will pardon me, mademoiselle,'
I said, 'if I seem to be abrupt, but time is everything. The horses are
standing within a hundred yards of the house, and all the preparations
for your flight are made. If we leave now, we can do so without
opposition. The delay even of an hour ma