Josephine yielded a mute submission at first; but at the very door hung back and faltered, “He loves another; he is married:  let me go.”  Rose made no reply, but left her there and went into the kitchen and found two dragoons seated round a bottle of wine.  They rose and saluted her.

“Be seated, my brave men,” said she; “only please tell me what you told Jacintha about Captain Dujardin.”

“Don’t stain your mouth with the captain, my little lady.  He is a traitor.”

“How do you know?”

“Marcellus! mademoiselle asks us how we know Captain Dujardin to be a traitor.  Speak.”

Marcellus, thus appealed to, told Rose after his own fashion that he knew the captain well:  that one day the captain rode out of the camp and never returned:  that at first great anxiety was felt on his behalf, for the captain was a great favorite, and passed for the smartest soldier in the division:  that after awhile anxiety gave place to some very awkward suspicions, and these suspicions it was his lot and his comrade’s here to confirm.  About a month later he and the said comrade and two more were sent, well mounted, to reconnoitre a Spanish village.  At the door of a little inn they caught sight of a French uniform.  This so excited their curiosity that he went forward nearer than prudent, and distinctly recognized Captain Dujardin seated at a table drinking between two guerillas; then he rode back and told the others, who then came up and satisfied themselves it was so:  that if any of the party had entertained a doubt, it was removed in an unpleasant way; he, Marcellus, disgusted at the sight of a French uniform drinking among Spaniards, took down his carabine and fired at the group as carefully as a somewhat restive horse permitted:  at this, as if by magic, a score or so of guerillas poured out from Heaven knows where, musket in hand, and delivered a volley; the officer in command of the party fell dead, Jean Jacques here got a broken arm, and his own horse was wounded in two places, and fell from loss of blood a few furlongs from the French camp, to the neighborhood of which the vagabonds pursued them, hallooing and shouting and firing like barbarous banditti as they were.

“However, here I am,” concluded Marcellus, “invalided for awhile, my lady, but not expended yet:  we will soon dash in among them again for death or glory.  Meantime,” concluded he, filling both glasses, “let us drink to the eyes of beauty (military salute); and to the renown of France; and double damnation to all her traitors, like that Captain Dujardin; whose neck may the devil twist.”

Ere they could drink to this energetic toast, a low wail at the door, like a dying hare’s, arrested the glasses on their road, and the rough soldiers stood transfixed, and looked at one another in some dismay.  Rose flew to the door with a face full of concern.

Josephine was gone.

Then Rose had the tact and resolution to say a few kind, encouraging words to the soldiers, and bid Jacintha be hospitable to them.  This done she darted up-stairs after Josephine; she reached the main corridor just in time to see her creep along it with the air and carriage of a woman of fifty, and enter her own room.