A few minutes later Célèste came tripping in, her pert face alight with curiosity; but when she caught sight of her lady she uttered a little shriek of distress thin and as piercing as a penny whistle. “But _mon Dieu_! What has Madame la Princesse done to herself!” she cried, her large dark eyes widened to their uttermost extent. Laurence rose impatiently, marched to the door, which she double-locked, and returned to the fire-corner, suddenly quite cool and collected. “I have had a terrible fright, Célèste,” she said. “This is a dreadful place; not fit for me to live in!” “Ah, Madame la Princesse may well say so!” the maid affirmed, hands and eyes uplifted in dramatic acquiescence. “Ah, but a place! A place of devils and devilries!” she continued, volubly; for though Laurence so angrily resented familiarity from her inferiors, to her maid and quasi-confidante of secrets perhaps weightier than those of the toilet, she was decidedly “uncorseted,” both physically and morally. “We shall all perish if Monsieur le Prince keeps us incarcerated here much longer. And those peasants, so ferocious, so savage! Not that some of them are not good-looking enough; the grooms, too. Madame la Princesse has not perhaps noticed the grooms?” Laurence laughed and shrugged her shoulders, but without any indignation whatsoever. This merry daughter of Provence amused her even at this critical moment. Moreover, during the last few minutes a sudden plan had formed in her head: a plan for the execution of which Célèste might be a most useful and powerful aid. “Don’t you think, Célèste,” she began, a trifle hesitatingly--“don’t you think that we might escape from here, you and I alone, without anybody being the wiser?” Célèste drew in her breath sensationally, and then let it out again between her rather pointed white teeth, in sincere compliment to a harmonious steam-valve. It was her usual method of expressing surprise, admiration, fear, joy, and what not else? There may be worse ones. “Decamp!--vanish!” she cried, joyfully. “What a magnificent idea! But”--and she paused, one dimpled hand to her lips--“how can we do it, Madame la Princesse? The château is guarded like a _caserne_, and it’s all rock, with walls that thick”--here she illustrated the thickness of those walls by a flight of both arms inimitably comprehensive and spaceful. “You were speaking of the grooms, whom _you_ decidedly have noticed,” interrupted Laurence. “Tell me frankly, have you got any special friend among them?” Célèste immediately fell into an attitude of unconvincing coyness; her whole diminutive person emanated a righteousness not to be trifled with, but the tip of her _retroussé_ nose moved quaintly, like that of a rabbit scenting clover-laden breezes--the devil was losing nothing--and Laurence, who knew her handmaiden by heart, waited silently.