"Spies! You--you--both--have talked of these." It may be he forgot in his frenzy that from him alone had such talk originated. "So be it. Yet, besides this English bully, this swashbuckler who slays in dark houses, those who would bring him to justice, are then no others present? What is this woman who in her self-righteousness denounces me as a traitor----" "She has done more; she has proved you to be one," the Comtesse said. "What is she?" Francbois went on. "What? Her husband died a traitor at the galleys; if women could be punished thus, she would be in a fair way to do so, too. Is she no traitor? She? She who is here to meet with Marlborough, or Cutts, or Athlone; to throw herself in their path, to intrigue with them for an invasion of the South--she who would have escaped to-night with those others had I not warned you of her. Warned you! There was no need of that! You who, like her, are of the South--a Camisard, a Cévenole." Again De Violaine looked at this man, and the look had in it more terror for the abject creature than a thousand words might have possessed; after which, addressing the soldiers, he said: "Remove both prisoners--each to a cell. Each of you," addressing both Bevill and Francbois, "will be subjected to a general court-martial when a sufficiency of officers can be collected to form it, and after the Maréchal de Boufflers and the Duc de Maine have been consulted. Mesdames," addressing the Comtesse and Sylvia, "you must return whence you set out. The Captain d'Aubenay and his men shall escort you." Thus the expedition, the escape from Liége, had failed, since all who were to have gone on it, as well as he who prevented its accomplishment, were prisoners. For that the Comtesse de Valorme and Sylvia were now in a way--though a different one--as much prisoners as Bevill Bracton and Francbois they could not doubt. Except that they would be free of Van Ryk's house and gardens--free, possibly, of the city itself--instead of being confined in some room, or rooms, in the citadel, all freedom was gone from them, and they knew and understood that it was so.