Gros Jean, as the Royalist soldier had called him, scratched his round head for a moment, and then replied, "I thought that you had been man and wife, from the King's message; but, however, as he said ladies, and there seems but one, there is another little room up stairs, and a good bed too, which you had better have, Sir." "No, no," replied De Montigni, "I will stay in the hall, if you will give me some straw.--We will be your guard during the darkness, dearest Rose," he added, pressing her hand in his, "so take a cup of warm milk, if it can be procured, and lie down to rest for this night, at least, in peace and security. I must go now to speak to these good fellows without." "Let me see you again for a moment, Louis, before I sleep," said Rose, gazing in his face with an anxious look; "you will not be long absent?" "Not five minutes, my beloved," replied De Montigni; and, leaving her with the farmer's wife and sister, he went out to speak with the men who had carried the litter from St. André. Let not the reader think, with the cold spirit of censure which is so ready at all times to blame everything that is not customary in our own times and in our own country, that there was aught unusual or improper in the invitation which Rose d'Albret had given her lover to visit her in her bed-chamber. In those days, though certainly not purer than the present--and bad enough are both--the common reception-room of a lady, especially in Paris, was that in which she slept. Often before she quitted her chamber, too, in England, as well as in France, the beauty of the hour received her train of admirers, in her bed; and, every art of coquetry was displayed, to win or increase admiration, as she lay in what was supposed to be the toilette of the night, but which had often cost her and her maids more than one hour of labour to arrange and render becoming. Such was not, indeed, the custom of Rose d'Albret, but still the habits of the country and the period would not have suffered her to feel that she was committing the slightest impropriety in admitting her lover to her room, even after she had retired to rest, nor would she have doubted the safety of her honour in the hands of De Montigni, under any circumstances of opportunity, or, of temptation. She knew him well, with that knowledge of the heart which perhaps can only be acquired by the intimacy of early youth, and she was certain that nothing on earth would induce him to blemish the being he loved, were there no eye but that of God to witness his actions.