Part 29 (1/2)

”Lambeth Church,” Dusions answered.

”Ah, your Protestant churches are not open; there is no shelter for us there,” sighed the Queen.

”There is shelter in the angle of the b.u.t.tress; I have been there, your Majesty,” said Dusions.

Thither then they turned.

”What can that be?” exclaimed the Queen, starting and shuddering as a fierce light flashed in the windows and played on the wall.

”It is not within, madame,” Lauzun encouraged; ”it is reflected light from a fire somewhere on the other side of the river.”

”A bonfire for our expulsion. Ah! why should they hate us so?”

sighed the poor Queen.

”'Tis worse than that, only there's no need to tell Her Majesty so,”

whispered Mrs. Labadie, who, in the difficulties of the ascent, had been fain to hand the still-sleeping child to Anne. ”'Tis the Catholic chapel of St. Roque. The heretic miscreants!”

”Pray Heaven no life be lost,” sighed Anne.

Sinister as the light was, it aided the poor fugitives at that dead hour of night to find an angle between the church wall and a b.u.t.tress where the eaves afforded a little shelter from the rain, which slackened a little, when they were a little concealed from the road, so that the light need not betray them in case any pa.s.senger was abroad at such an hour, as two chimed from the clock overhead.

The women kept together close against the wall to avoid the drip of the eaves. Lauzun walked up and down like a sentinel, his arms folded, and talking all the while, though, as before, his utterances were only an accompaniment to the falling rain and howling wind; Mary Beatrice was murmuring prayers over the sleeping child, which she now held in the innermost corner; Anne, with wide-stretched eyes, was gazing into the light cast beyond the b.u.t.tress by the fire on the opposite side, when again there pa.s.sed across it that form she had seen on All Saints' Eve--the unmistakable phantom of Peregrine.

It was gone into the darkness in another second; but a violent start on her part had given a note of alarm, and brought back the Count, whose walk had been in the opposite direction.

”What was it? Any spy?”

”Oh no--no--nothing! It was the face of one who is dead,” gasped Anne.

”The poor child's nerve is failing her,” said the Queen gently, as Lauzun drawing his sword burst out--

”If it be a spy it _shall_ be the face of one who is dead;” and he darted into the road, but returned in a few moments, saying no one had pa.s.sed except one of the rowers returning after running up to the inn to hasten the coach; how could he have been seen from the church wall? The wheels were heard drawing up at that moment, so that the only thought was to enter it as quickly as might be in the same order as before, after which the start was made, along the road that led through the marshes of Lambeth; and then came the inquiry-- an anxious one--whom or what mademoiselle, as Lauzun called her, had seen.

”O monsieur!” exclaimed the poor girl in her confusion, her best French failing, ”it was nothing--no living man.”

”Can mademoiselle a.s.sure me of that? The dead I fear not, the living I would defy.”

”He lives not,” said she in an undertone, with a shudder.

”But who is he that mademoiselle can be so certain?” asked the Frenchman.

”Oh! I know him well enough,” said Anne, unable to control her voice.

”Mademoiselle must explain herself,” said M. de Lauzun. ”If he be spirit--or phantom--there is no more to say, but if he be in the flesh, and a spy--then--” There was a little rattle of his sword.

”Speak, I command,” interposed the Queen; ”you must satisfy M. le Comte.”

Thus adjured, Anne said in a low voice of horror: ”It was a gentleman of our neighbourhood; he was killed in a duel last summer!”