"Being resolved," Bevill said, "doubtless your plans for leaving Liége are decided on. How have you determined to quit the city?" "For our purpose," Sylvia answered, "we are all French. You are M. de Belleville, Madame is truly the Comtesse de Valorme, I am her maid." "Yet her actual maid is old," Bevill said. "They will not know that at the gate." "'Tis best," Van Ryk said now, speaking for the first time, while remarking that the wind was rising and rustling the leaves behind the arbour, "that you leave at a fixed time. The east gate is the last left open, but even for the French themselves that is closed to them and all and every as the clock from St. Lambert's strikes eleven, after which none can enter or pass out. It will be well, therefore, that you should meet the ladies," he continued, addressing Bevill, "ere they reach the gate. If chance is with you all you should be outside in safety ere the hour has struck." "Where and when shall it be?" Bevill asked. "By the Prince's palace at ten of the night. Then are our townsmen in their houses and shortly after in their beds, and the streets are therefore well-nigh deserted. Also our invaders," he went on bitterly, "are all called in at sunset, the town is quiet. Beyond your questioning at the gate there will be naught to impede you." "Is it agreed on?" Sylvia asked of Bevill. "As you command," he answered, "it shall be. At ten of the night to-morrow I shall be outside the Prince's palace or no longer alive." "Ah!" exclaimed Sylvia, shuddering at the very thought of Bevill's being no longer in existence twenty-four hours hence. "Never speak nor dream of it. If I thought there was danger of such horrors would I quit Liége?" An instant after Bevill had spoken he knew that his words were ill-timed. He recognised that to alarm Sylvia at this moment--the moment when she had decided to set out on the road to England--was madness. Madness, because he knew--he could not help but know--that after the episodes of the last night in the now gloomy and deserted Weiss Haus his own life was in serious danger; not from any violence that Francbois might attempt against him--that, he doubted not, he could meet and overthrow--but from his treachery. And though, soldier-like, he thought but little of his life and was willing to freely set it against the prize that success and increase of honour would bring, he was not willing to set it against the sweet, new-born hopes that had sprung to his heart; against the desire to win this beautiful and stately woman for his wife.