‘Drive round that way, if you are bent on going,’ said Louia, coolly.  ‘Meantime, Virginia, my dear, I will thank you for some coffee.’

‘How can you talk of such things?’ cried his aunt.  ’It is all those savage wretches, mad because the national workshops are closed.  Delaford declares they will massacre all the English.’

’Poor wretches, I believe they are starving.  I think you are making yourself ill—­the most pressing danger.  Come, Virginia, persuade your mamma to sit down to breakfast, while I go to reconnoitre.  Where are the passports?’

Virginia had lost all terror in excitement, but neither she nor her mother could bear to let him go out, to return they knew not when.  The carriage had already been ordered, but Lady Conway was exceedingly frightened at the notion of driving anywhere but direct to the railway station; she was sure that they should encounter something frightful if they went along the Boulevards.

‘Could not Delaford go to fetch Isabel?’ suggested Virginia, ’he might take a carriage belonging to the hotel.’

Delaford was summoned, and desired to go to fetch Miss Conway, but though he said, ‘Yes, my Lady,’ he looked yellow and white, and loitered to suggest whether the young lady would not be alarmed.

‘I will go with you,’ said Louis.  ’Order the carriage, and I shall be ready.’

Lady Conway, to whom his presence seemed protection, was almost remonstrating, but he said, ’Delaford is in no state to be of use.  He would take bonjour for a challenge.  Let me go with him, or he will take care the young lady is alarmed.  When we are all together, we can do as may seem best, and I shall be able better to judge whether we are to fight or fly.’

Outside the door he found Delaford, who begged to suggest to his lordship that my Lady would be alarmed if she were left without either of them, he could hardly answer it to himself that she should remain without any male protector.

‘Oh yes, pray remain to defend her,’ said Louis, much amused, and hastening down-stairs he ordered the carriage to drive to Bue —–­, off the Boulevard St. Martin.

He thought there were signs boding tempest.  Shops were closed, and men in blouses were beginning to assemble in knots—­here and there the red-cap loomed ominously in the far end of narrow alleys, and in the wider streets the only passengers either seemed in haste like himself, or else were National Guards hurrying to their alarm-post.

He came safely to Miss Longman’s apartments, where he found all on the alert—­the governess and her nieces recounting their experiences of February, which convinced them that there was more danger in returning than in remaining.  Miss Longman was urgent to keep Isabel and Lord Fitzjocelyn for at least a few hours, which she declared would probably be the duration of any emeute, but they knew this would cause dreadful anxiety, and when Fitzjocelyn proposed returning alone, Isabel insisted on accompanying him, declaring that she had no fears, and that her mother would be miserable if her absence should detain them.  Perhaps she was somewhat deceived by the cool, almost ludicrous, light in which he placed the revolution, as a sort of periodical spasm, and Miss Longman’s predictions that the railway would be closed, only quickened her preparations.