One moment. The next Odette struck her--struck her with furious, frantic rage, and flung her from her. "It is you! You have done this! You!" she cried, panting, and with blazing eyes. "You have killed her! You!" The young girl staggered back with the mark of the Abbess's fingers crimson on her cheek. She stood an instant breathing hard, the combative instinct awakened by the blow showing in her eyes and her small bared teeth. Then she flung her hands to her face. "It is true! It is true!" she sobbed. "But I did not know!" "Know?" the Abbess cried back relentlessly; and she was going to add other and madder and more insulting words, when her father's face of amazement checked her. She fell back sullenly, and with a gesture of despair turned her face to the wall. The Vicomte was on his feet, shocked by what had passed. He began to babble words of apology, of excuse; while Joyeuse, ravished, strange to say, by the spirit of the woman he had deemed above anger and above passion, smiled exultant, wondering what new, what marvellous, what incomparable side of herself this wonderful woman would next exhibit. He who had exhausted all common types, all common moods, saw that he had here the quintessence both of heaven and earth. Her beauty, her meekness, her indignation, her sorrow--what an amalgam was here! And how all qualities became her! Had Roger been there he had taken, it is possible, another view. But he was not; and presently into the halting flow of the Vicomte's words crept a murmur, a tramp of feet, a sound indescribable, but proclaiming news. He broke off. "What is it?" he said. "What is it?" "News! Ay, news, for a hundred crowns!" the Duke answered. He moved to the door. The Countess, her face bedabbled with tears, tears of outraged pride as well as grief, stayed her sobs and looked in the same direction. Even the Abbess caught the infection, and raising her head from the pillow listened with parted lips and staring eyes. News! There was news. But what was it? Good or bad? The Abbess, her heart standing still, bit her lip till the blood came. The murmur of voices drew nearer. CHAPTER XVIII. TWO IN THE MILL. It is possible that Bonne did not herself know in what proportions pity and a warmer sentiment entered into her motives when she undertook to pass for the Countess and assume the girl's risks. Certainly her first thought was for the Countess; and, for the rest, she felt herself cleared from the reproach of unmaidenliness by the danger of the step which she was taking. Even so, as she rode across the camp in the dusk of the first evening, into the half pain, half pleasure that burned her cheeks under the disguising hood entered some heat of shame.