He trotted up till he faced the garden-wall, and then turned short round to the house, and as he rode close up under the gable-end, he gave Sergeant Craucher directions to take three men and force the door; but he and the sergeant soon saw that this trouble was spared them, for the door stood wide open before them.

We will now go back to the inhabitants of the chateau.  De Lescure and Henri had returned thither about eleven o’clock, and although their safe return, and account of the evening’s victorious engagement for a while quieted the anxious fears of Marie and Madame de Lescure, those ladies by no means felt inclined to rest quietly as though all danger were removed from their pillows.  They were in a dreadful alarm at the nearness of the republicans; they knew well that their ruthless enemies spared none that fell into their hands.  I should belie these heroines if I said that they feared more for themselves than for those they loved so dearly, but they were not accustomed yet to the close vicinity of danger; and when they learned that a battle had been lost and won that evening, within a mile or two, in the very next parish to that in which they lived, they looked at each other, and trembling asked what next was to be done.

“You must not leave us, Charles, you must not leave us again,” said Madame de Lescure to her husband; “indeed you must not leave us here.”  She paused a moment, and then added, with an accent of horror which she could not control, “What would become of us if these men came upon us when you were away?”

“Wherever you go, let us go with you,” said Marie, forgetting in her excitement her usual maidenly reserve, and laying her little hand as she spoke upon her lover’s arm; then blushing, she withdrew it, and turned to her brother.

“Do not turn from him, Marie,” said her sister-in-law.  “You will soon want his strong arm, and his kind, loving heart.”

“Charles will not desert me, Victorine,” said Marie, blushing now more beautifully than ever, for though she knew that Henri loved her, he had never absolutely told her so.  “Though you are his dearest care, he will always have a hand to stretch to his poor Marie.”

Before she had finished speaking, Henri held her close in his embrace.  It was perhaps hardly a fitting time for him to make an avowal of his love; but lovers cannot always choose the most proper season for their confessions.  He was still hot from the battle which he had fought; his hands were still black with powder; the well-known red scarf was still twisted round his belt, and held within its folds his armament of pistols.  His fair, long hair was uncombed, and even entangled with his exertions.  His large boots were covered with dust, and all his clothes were stained and soiled with the grass and weeds through which he had that night dragged himself more than once, in order to place himself within pistol-shot of his enemies; and yet, soiled and hot as he was, fatigued with one battle, and meditating preparations for another, there, in the presence of de Lescure and his wife, he clasped Marie to his manly heart, and swore to her that his chief anxiety as long as the war lasted, should be to screen her from all harm, and that his fondest care through his whole life should be to protect her and make her happy.