"They're calling! Did you hear? A woman's cries! It's the cook! It's Marie Le Goff! . . ."
She made a dash for the gate and grasped the key, but inserted it so awkwardly that she jammed the lock and was unable to open it.
"Through the gap!" she ordered. "This way, on the right!"
They rushed along, scrambled through the wall and crossed a wide grassy space filled with ruins, in which the winding and ill-marked path disappeared at every moment under trailing creepers and moss.
"Here we are! Here we are!" shouted Honorine. "We're coming!"
"The cries have stopped! It's dreadful! Oh, poor Marie Le Goff!"
"Let's go round. The front of the house is on the other side. On this side the doors are always locked and the window-shutters closed."
But Véronique caught her foot in some roots, stumbled and fell to her knees. When she stood up again, the Breton woman had left her and was hurrying round the left wing. Unconsciously, Véronique, instead of following her, made straight for the house, climbed the step and was brought up short by the door, at which she knocked again and again.
The idea of going round, as Honorine had done, seemed to her a waste of time which nothing could ever make good. However, realising the futility of her efforts, she was just deciding to go, when once more cries sounded from inside the house and above her head.
It was a man's voice, which Véronique seemed to recognize as her father's. She fell back a few steps. Suddenly one of the windows on the first floor opened and she saw M. d'Hergemont, his features distorted with inexpressible terror, gasping:
"Father! Father!" cried Véronique, in despair. "It's I!"
He lowered his head for an instant, appeared not to see his daughter and made a quick attempt to climb over the balcony. But a shot rang out behind him and one of the window-panes was blown into fragments.
"Murderer, murderer!" he shouted, turning back into the room.
Véronique, mad with fear and helplessness, looked around her. How could she rescue her father? The wall was too high and offered nothing to cling to. Suddenly, she saw a ladder, lying twenty yards away, beside the wall of the house. With a prodigious effort of will and strength, she managed to carry the ladder, heavy though it was, and to set it up under the open window.