Lucy lay calm and unmoved; every day that brought the English nearer, was bringing her nearer to Kit. The thunder of the bombardment was to her like the knocking on the gate which shut her in from her one object in life, and that it was being shattered meant only deliverance. When orders came to remove to the General Hospital, without the walls of the town and beyond all immediate danger, she was more disturbed than at any time during the siege. The Hospital stood in the valley of the St. Charles, somewhat less than a mile from the town, with the river sweeping in a great bend on the one side, and the steep Heights, at the end of which the town stood, rising on the other. We were cut off from any view of the St. Lawrence, but the sight of the bridge of boats, with its hornwork, across the tongue of land enclosed by the sweep of the river, and the walls of the town crowning the Heights, kept us in touch with the struggle going on between us and the English, who still held the St. Lawrence, with its opposite shore. The convent itself was a pile of grey stone buildings forming a quadrangle with wings, begun by the Recollect fathers nearly a century before. It was in two of their curious little cells that Mme. de Sarennes, Angelique, and I were lodged. The chapel opened out of the square entry--it scarce could be dignified as a hall--on which the principal doorway gave, and to the right of this was the long, low-ceilinged room, lighted by many-paned windows down one side, which now served as a common meeting-place for the nuns of the three congregations and their numerous guests. Here all who were willing and able to work placed themselves under the direction of the Superior, for the nuns had more than they could well attend to, with the invalids of the Hotel-Dieu added to their own, as well as the wounded, who now began to come in. On the last day of July we heard heavy firing towards Montmorenci, beginning about mid-day, and towards five o'clock it increased to a continuous dull roar. It was dark before the first messenger reached us, and our hearts were lifted by the tidings he bore. It was victory, perhaps complete and final; the English had left hundreds of dead behind them, and our loss was nothing. Scarce an hour after this the wounded began to arrive, and being but a novice to such sights, I was glad when the Superior, noticing my pale face, called Angelique to bid us go out into the court-yard and get a breath of fresh air. It was a welcome relief to us both, and we were walking up and down, eagerly discussing the news, when an officer rode in at the gate, supporting a wounded man before him. "It is M. de Maxwell!" cried Angelique, joyfully, and my impulse was to turn and fly, but he had already recognised Angelique, and called to her without ceremony: