’But, oh! what will Madame do?  Where would she go?  Oh! it is impossible.’

’First to thy father’s.  Yes, I know.  He has once called it a madness to think of rallying my vassals to protect their lady.  That was when he heard of it from thee—­thou faint of heart—­and thy mother.  I shall speak to him in person now.  Make haste, I tell thee, girl.  I must be out of this place before I am watched or guarded,’ she added breathlessly.  ’I feel as if each moment I lost might have death upon it;’ and she looked about her like a startled deer.

’To my father’s.  Ah! there it is not so ill!  But the twilights, the length of way,’ sobbed Veronique, in grievous distress and perplexity.  ’Oh!  Madame, I cannot see you go.  The Mother Abbess is good.  She must have pity.  Oh, trust to her!’

’Trust!  Did I not trust to my cousin Diane?  Never!  Nothing will kill me but remaining in their hands.’

Veronique argued and implored in vain.  Ever since, in the height of those vehement austerities by which the bereaved and shattered sufferer strove to appease her wretchedness by the utmost endeavour to save her husband’s soul, the old foster-mother had made known to her that she might thus sacrifice another than herself.  Eustacie’s elastic heart had begun to revive, with all its dauntless strength of will.  What to her women seemed only a fear, was to her only a hope.

Frank and confiding as was her nature, however, the cruel deceptions already practiced on her by her own kindred, together with the harsh words with which the Abbess spoke of Berenger, had made her aware that no comfort must be looked for in that quarter.  It was, after all, perhaps her won instinct, and the aunt’s want of sympathy, that withheld her from seeking counsel of any save Perrine and her daughter, at any rate till she could communicate with the kind young Queen.  To her, then, Eustacie had written, entreating that a royal mandate would recall her in time to bestow herself in some trustworthy hands, or even in her husband’s won Norman castle, where his heir would be both safe and welcome.  But time has passed—­the whole space that she had reckoned as needful for the going and coming of her messenger—­allowing for all the obstructions of winter roads—­nay, he had come back; she knew letter was delivered, but answer there was none.  It might yet come—­perhaps a royal carriage and escort—­and day after day had she waited and hoped, only tardily admitting the conviction that Elisabeth of Austria was as powerless as Eustacie de Ribaumont, and meantime revolving and proposing many a scheme that could only have entered the brain of a brave-spirited child as she was.  To appeal to her vassals, garrison with them a ruinous old tower in the woods, and thence send for aid to the Montmorencys; to ride to Saumur, and claim the protection of the governor of the province; to make her way to the coast and sail for England; to start for Paris, and throw