“Kill us, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the overseer, quaking in every limb. “Oh, no! never! They cannot be so bad as that. We will temporise, we will supplicate, we will make terms with them; we will offer freedom, and rum, and plunder; we will go on our knees to their chief, and entreat his mercy!” The girl looked at him contemptuously. Strange to say, her courage rose as his fell, and she seemed to gather strength and energy from the abject selfishness of his despair. The Marquise did not heed him, for she heard Fleurette’s footsteps returning, and was herself busied with an oblong wooden case, brass-bound, and carefully locked up, that she lifted from the recess of a cupboard in the room. Fleurette’s black feet could carry her swiftly and lightly as a bird. She had followed her instructions implicitly, had crept noiselessly through the kitchen, and advanced unseen to the old summer-house. Peering from that concealment on the moonlit surface of the lawn, she was horrorstruck to observe nearly a score of slaves intently watching the house. She hurried back panting to her mistress’s presence, and made her discouraging report. Madame de Montmirail was very grave now. The affair had become more than serious. It was, in truth, desperate. Once again, as she looked at her daughter, came that strange quiver over her features, that shudder of repressed horror rather than pain. It was succeeded, as before, by a moment of deep reflection, and then her eye kindled, her lips tightened, and all her soft voluptuous beauty hardened into the obstinate courage of despair. Cerise sank on her knees to pray, and rose with a pale, serene, undaunted face. Hers was the passive endurance of the martyr. Her mother’s the tameless valour of the champion, inherited through a long line of the turbulent La Fiertés, not one of whom had ever blenched from death nor yielded an inch before the face of man. “Bartoletti!” said the Marquise. “Bar the doors and windows; they can be forced with half-a-dozen strokes, but in war every minute is of value. Hold this rabble in parley as long as you can. I dare not trust you with my pistols, for a weak heart makes a shaking hand, and I think fighting seems less your trade than mine. When you can delay them no longer, arrange your own terms with the villains. It is possible they may spare you for your wife’s sake. Quick, man! I hear them coming now. Cerise, our bedroom has a strong oaken door, and they cannot reach the window without a ladder, which leaves us but one enemy to deal with at a time. Courage, my darling! Kiss me! Again, again! my own! And now. A woman dies but once! Here goes for France, and the lilies on the White Flag!”