She looked out over the tranquil scene with an anxious heart. What had happened yonder in that murky night? Who had fallen? She could see soldiers on the distant highroad, and now and then a train of wagons moving slowly in the direction of the St. Hippolyte road, but these things told her no more than the flames of the night before. Cavalier had been repulsed, no doubt, but how many had fallen? She could not tell, and her heart throbbed and her hands trembled as she busied herself with the morning tasks. She and her grandmother sat down as usual to breakfast, but she could not eat; she quietly fed Truffe with her meal. Madame de St. Cyr herself scarcely touched anything, and Babet removed the dishes with a gloomy face. There was no conversation, there could not be while the terror of the night was upon them, and d’Aguesseau’s vacant chair seemed to mock them. Once during the day Madame de St. Cyr let her knitting fall in her lap and looked at Rosaline with tears in her eyes. “Alas!” she said quietly, “I fear I shall never see him again--and he was a brave man. But for me he would have gone long ago.” Her granddaughter looked at her strangely. “Did you urge him to stay here?” she asked. “I prayed him to be near us,” the old woman replied. “I felt that I might go, and there would be no one to help you. Père Ambroise would be all on M. de Baudri’s side.” “And you told M. d’Aguesseau that?” exclaimed Rosaline, her face flushing. “Something like it, yes,” Madame de St. Cyr rejoined sadly; “but the call came and he obeyed it. May the _bon Dieu_ protect him and us.” Rosaline made no reply, but went out of the room and up the stairs to her own, where she knelt in the window recess, her head on her arms. This, then, was the key to all that she had not understood. He had stayed to protect them, to serve them, and but for that might perhaps have been in England, and her grandmother had demanded this return for her friendship. Rosaline’s face burned; she did not look up, even when Truffe came in search of her and thrust her head into her mistress’s lap.