A moment later the man had held a curtain aside and had retired after letting it drop behind them again, and they were face to face with the greatest captain of the age. He was standing in front of a brazier in which burned some logs, for the evenings were growing colder now and the damp was over all, and as the women's eyes fell on that handsome presence and noted the wonderful serenity of the features, any trepidation they might have felt vanished. Clad in his dark blue coat--he was Colonel of the Blues--with, beneath it, the ribbon of the Garter across his breast, he stood facing the curtain until they appeared, and then, advancing towards them, lifted the hand of each to his lips, while murmuring some courteous phrase, immediately after which he placed two rough chairs before them and begged them to be seated. "Madame la Comtesse," he said now, and they noticed the refined, courtly tones of a voice that, though soft and even, was a little shrill. "I have heard your tale briefly from Captain Barringer. If help can come from me it shall. Yet am I vastly concerned to know how I can offer aid." "My lord," said Sylvia, lifting her eyes to his, while little knowing how he had noticed her beauty in one swift glance, "it is said in Liége that you will be soon there; and then--then--then the French will be no longer in possession of that city." His lordship smiled slightly as she said this and seemed to muse an instant, after which he said: "It may be so; but ere that can be, I must clear my way to Liége. There are towns and fortresses upon the road. Venloo is one, and time is necessary." "Time! Oh!" the girl almost gasped. "Time! And in that time they may have tried Mr. Bracton and--ah! I cannot utter it!" "It may indeed be so," he murmured, seeing the look on Sylvia's face. "I would not say a word to alarm you; but courts-martial, trials in war time, are apt to be swift. And the condition of Mr. Bracton is perilous; he has placed himself in a dangerous position." "My lord," the Comtesse said, "we have heard but lately that in your hands is one, the Marquis de Cabrieres, who lies under sentence of death for a similar offence against you and a town in your possession. Yet he still lives. May it not be the same, may we not hope the same respite, for Mr. Bracton?" As she spoke, not only she, but Sylvia too, saw that her words had had some strange effect on the Earl. They observed a light come in his eyes, a little more colour mount to his cheeks--evidences that those words had produced in his mind some striking effect. That effect they were soon to learn. He went to a coarse, wooden table, covered with papers--a table that had, doubtless, been purchased with many others for a few gulden at some town through which the army passed, and, taking from off it two of those papers, said, as he held them in his hand: