M. de Vlaye looked at the chatterer askance, and mechanically gnawed his moustache. He believed, nay, he was almost sure that she knew all and was playing with him. If so she was playing so successfully that here they were at the corner of the courtyard and he no nearer a decision. They had but to pass along one wall, turn, and in forty paces they would be at the gate. He must make up his mind promptly, then! And, curse her! she talked so fast that he could not bring his mind to it, or weigh the emergencies. If he seized the girl here---- "Roger should not have let her try to cross the brook, M. de Vlaye, should he?" Bonne babbled. "He should have known better. Now she has wet her feet and must change her shoes! Yes," playfully, "you must, mademoiselle." "I will," the Countess muttered with shaking lips. One of the troopers who had been of the expedition the day before, and whom the situation tickled, laughed on a sudden outright. M. de Vlaye half halted, turned and looked back in wrath. Was he going to give the signal? Bonne's arm shook. But no, he turned again. And they were almost at the second corner; now they turned it, and her eyes sought the gate greedily, to learn who awaited them there. If the Vicomte was there, and her sister, it was so much in her favour. He would hardly dare to carry the girl off by force under their eyes. But they were not there. Even Solomon was invisible; probably he had taken the Abbess's horse to the stable. Bonne was left to her own resources, therefore, to her own wits; and at the gate, at the moment of interest, at the last moment, the pinch would come. And still, but with a dry throat, she talked. "To leave the sun for the shade!" she cried with a prodigious sigh as the western wall of the courtyard intervened and protected them from the sun's heat. "Is it not delightful! It was almost worth while to be so hot, to feel so cool! Are you cool, M. de Vlaye?" "Yes," he replied grimly, "but----" "Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?" she sang, cutting him short--they were within seven or eight paces of the gateway, and she fancied that his face was growing hard, that she detected the movements of a man preparing to make his leap-- "Sommes-nous a la rive? Sommes-nous au milieu du bois? Sommes-nous a la rive? _A la rive? A la rive!_" she chanted, her arm closing more tightly about the Countess. "_A la rive!_"