But the boarded door was thrown back, and ‘Madame, more wounded,’ resounded.  The thrill of terror, the elastic reaction, at the ensuing words, ‘from the north gate,’ was what made Eustacie in an instant know herself to be not widow but wife.  She turned round at once, holding out her hand, and saying with a shaken, agitated voice, ’Mon frere, pardon me, I know not what I say; and, after all, he will find me bien mechante still.’  Then as Philip devoured her hand with kisses, and held it fast, ’I must go; these poor men need me.  When I can, I will return.’

‘Only let me have the little one,’ entreated Philip; ’it is almost home already to look at her.’

And when Eustacie next looked in on them, they were both fast asleep.

She, poor thing, the only woman with brains among the many scared females in the garrison, might not rest or look the wonder in the face.  Fresh sufferers needed her care, and related gallant things of ‘the Duke’s Englishman,’ things of desperate daring and prowess that sent the blood throbbing to her heart with exultation, but only to be followed by a pang of anguish at having let him go back to peril—­nay, perhaps, to death—­without a word of tenderness or even recognition.  She imaged him as the sunny-faced youth who had claimed her in the royal castle, and her longing to be at his side and cling to him as his own became every moment more fervent and irresistible, until she gladly recollected the necessity of carrying food to the defenders; and snatching an interval from her hospital cares, she sped to the old circular kitchen of the monastery, where she found the lame baker vainly trying to organize a party of frightened women to carry provisions to the garrison of the bridge-tower.

‘Give some to me,’ she said.  ’My husband is there!  I am come to fetch his dinner.’

The peasant women looked and whispered as if they thought that, to add to their misfortunes, their Lady of Hope had become distracted by grief; and one or two, who held the old faith, and were like the crane among the sparrows, even observed that it was a judgment for the profane name that had been given her, against which she had herself uniformly protested.

‘My husband is come,’ said Eustacie, looking round with shining eyes.  ‘Let us be brave wives, and not let our men famish.’

She lifted a loaf and a pitcher of broth, and with the latter poised on her erect and graceful head, and elastic though steady step, she led the way; the others following her with a sort of awe, as of one they fancied in a superhuman state.  In fact, there was no great danger in traversing the bridge with its lofty parapet on either side; and her mind was too much exalted and moved to be sensible of anything but a certain exulting awe of the battle sounds.  There was, however, a kind of lull in the assault which had raged so fiercely ever since the fall of the officer, and the arrival of the reinforcements.