earnestness to the low bow with which the farmer bent to evident certainty that here was the imprisoned Protestant husband of the poor lady.  Berenger wore his black vizard mask as had been required of him, but the man’s eyes followed him, as though learning by heart the outline of his tall figure.  The object of the Chevalier’s journey was, of course, a secret from the prisoners, who merely felt its effects by having their meals served to them in their own tower; and when he returned after about a month’s absence though him looking harassed, aged, and so much out of humour that he could scarcely preserve his usual politeness.  In effect he was greatly chagrined.

‘That she is in their hands is certain, the hypocrites!’ he said to his daughter and sister; ’and no less so that they have designs on her; but I let them know that these could be easily traversed.’

‘But where is she, the unhappy apostate child?’ said the Abbess.  ‘They durst not refuse her to you.’

’I tell you they denied all present knowledge of her.  The Duke himself had the face to make as though he never heard of her.  He had no concern with his mother’s household and guests forsooth!  I do not believe he has; the poor fellow stands in awe of that terrible old heretic dragon, and keeps aloof from her as much as he can.  But he is, after all, a beau jeune home; nor should I be surprised if he were the girl’s gay bridegroom by this time, though I gave him a hint that there was an entanglement about the child’s first marriage which, by French law, would invalidate any other without a dispensation from the Pope.’

‘A hard nut that for a heretic,’ laughed the Abbess.

’He acted the ignorant—­knew nothing about the young lady; but had the civility to give me a guide and an escort to go to Quinet. Ma foi!  I believe they were given to hinder me—­take me by indirect roads, make me lose time at chateaux.  When I arrived at the grim old chateau—­a true dungeon, precise as a convent—­there was the dame, playing the Queen Jeanne as well as she could, and having the insolence to tell me that it was true that Madame la Baronne de Ribaumont, as she was pleased to call her, had honoured her residence for some months, but that she had now quitted it, and she flatly refused to answer any question whither she was gone!  The hag! she might at least have had the decorum to deny all knowledge of her, but nothing is more impertinent that the hypocritical sincerity of the heretics.’

‘But her people,’ exclaimed the Abbess; ’surely some of them knew, and could be brought to speak.’