"My boy, what is this?" I cried, not hiding my anger. "You would ride away secretly, and without permission of your mistress?" "It was my duty, when I followed to protect her," the boy said. "Mlle. de Varion was mad, I think, to go alone at this hour." "Mademoiselle?" I echoed, in great mystification. "Alone? Whither?" "To Clochonne, to M. de la Chatre," was the reply. It took away from me for a moment the very power of speech. I stared at the boy in dumb amazement. "Clochonne! La Chatre! Mademoiselle!" I murmured, questioningly, my faculty of comprehension being for the instant dazed. "How do you know, boy?" "She said so when she left this courtyard to take horse," the boy replied. "When I asked her whither she was bound, she said to Clochonne to see M. de la Chatre, and she spoke of some mission, but I could not hear the words exactly, for she was in great excitement. She then made off, declaring she would go alone, but it was my duty, nevertheless, to follow and guard her." "Mademoiselle gone to Clochonne, to La Chatre," I repeated, as one in a dream. At that instant there came again from somewhere in the chateau the voice of the gypsy in the song. "False flame of woman's love!" "The devil!" muttered Blaise. "Was De Berquin right?" And he ran into the chateau. "The woman who told our hiding-place!" said Frojac. Could it be? Was she another Mademoiselle d'Arency? Had she thought that, after De Berquin's accusation, any attempt on her part to draw me from my men would convict her in my eyes; that indeed I might come at any moment to believe in the treachery of which he had warned me? Had this thought driven her to Clochonne, where she might be safe from my avenging wrath, where also she might advise the governor to attack me at once? She had spoken to the boy of a mission. There had, then, been a mission, and it had to do with herself and the governor! As this horrible idea filled my mind, I felt a kind of sinking, and as if the very earth trembled beneath me. But then I thought of mademoiselle's sweet face, and I hurled the dark thought from me, amazed that I could have held it for an instant. "It is not true!" I cried, loudly. "By God, it is not true! I'll not believe it! She has not gone! She is in her chamber yonder!" And I went and stood beneath her window. "Mademoiselle! Come to the window! Tell us that the boy lies or is deluded! Mademoiselle, I say!" But no face appeared at the window--that window up to which I had looked a few moments before while I sat on the bench, thinking that my love was behind it. And now Blaise came running out of the chateau. He stopped on the steps. "She is not there," he said. "I found only the maid, wailing out prayers to a Catholic saint!" So she was really gone--gone! She must have left while I was interrogating De Berquin's three henchmen in their cell or while I had stood with Blaise in the garden, reproving him for his suspicions of her.