‘But,’ said I, ’he must have known that your affections were already engaged.’

‘He did,’ she answered; ’it was that which made me most uneasy of all.  I was afraid for you and afraid for myself, but, most of all, I was afraid for Lucien.  No man can stand in the way of his plans.’

’Lucien!  ’The name was like a lightning flash upon a dark night.  I had heard of the vagaries of a woman’s love, but was it possible that this spirited woman loved that poor creature whom I had seen grovelling last night in a frenzy of fear?  But now I remembered also where I had seen the name Sibylle.  It was upon the fly-leaf of his book.  ’Lucien, from Sibylle,’ was the inscription.  I recalled also that my uncle had said something to him about his aspirations.

‘Lucien is hot-headed, and easily carried away,’ said she.  ’My father has seen a great deal of him lately.  They sit for hours in his room, and Lucien will say nothing of what passes between them.  I fear that there is something going forward which may lead to evil.  Lucien is a student rather than a man of the world, but he has strong opinions about politics.’

I was at my wit’s ends what to do, whether to be silent, or to tell her of the terrible position in which her lover was placed; but, even as I hesitated, she, with the quick intuition of a woman, read the doubts which were in my mind.

‘You know something of him,’ she cried.  ’I understood that he had gone to Paris.  For God’s sake tell me what you know about him!’

‘His name is Lesage?’

‘Yes, yes.  Lucien Lesage.’

‘I have—­I have seen him,’ I stammered.

’You have seen him!  And you only arrived in France last night.  Where did you see him?  What has happened to him?’ She gripped me by the wrist in her anxiety.

It was cruel to tell her, and yet it seemed more cruel still to keep silent.  I looked round in my bewilderment, and there was my uncle himself coming along over the close-cropped green lawn.  By his side, with a merry clashing of steel and jingling of spurs, there walked a handsome young hussar—­the same to whom the charge of the prisoner had been committed upon the night before.  Sibylle never hesitated for an instant, but, with a set face and blazing eyes, she swept towards them.

‘Father,’ said she, ‘what have you done with Lucien?’

I saw his impassive face wince for a moment before the passionate hatred and contempt which he read in her eyes.  ’We will discuss this at some future time,’ said he.

‘I will know here and now,’ she cried.  ’What have you done with Lucien?’

‘Gentlemen,’ said he, turning to the young hussar and me,’ I am sorry that we should intrude our little domestic differences upon your attention.  You will, I am sure, make allowances, lieutenant, when I tell you that your prisoner of last night was a very dear friend of my daughter’s.  Such family considerations do not prevent me from doing my duty to the Emperor, but they make that duty more painful than it would otherwise be.’