"Yes. Madame declares that as she is in France she will stay."
"Yes; and she is now on her way to La Vendée,--in fact, she may actually be here now."
"Through a message received from her to-night at the château de Montaigu, just as the meeting was about to break up disheartened."
"Gallant soul!" cried Bertha, enthusiastically.
"Papa returned home at full gallop, and finding where you were, he told me to take the horses and fetch you."
"Well, here I am!" said Bertha, putting her foot into the stirrup.
"Are not you going to bid good-bye to your poor knight?"
"Oh, yes," said Bertha, holding out her hand to the young man, who advanced to take it slowly and sadly.
"Ah! Mademoiselle Bertha," he murmured, taking her hand, "I am very unhappy."
"Not to be, as you said just now, one of you."
"What prevents it?" said Mary, holding out her hand to him.
The young man darted on that hand and kissed it in a passion of love and gratitude.
"Oh! yes, yes, yes," he murmured, so low that Mary alone could hear him; "for you, mademoiselle, and with you."
Mary's hand was roughly torn from his grasp by a sudden movement of her horse. Bertha, in touching hers, had struck that of her sister on the flank. Horses and riders, starting at a gallop, were soon lost like shadows in the darkness.
The young man stood motionless in the roadway.
"Yes, yes, yes," he said, stretching his arms toward their vanishing figures; "yes, au revoir! au revoir!"
The two girls continued their way without uttering a word, until they reached the castle gate, and there Bertha said, abruptly:--
A cry of pain had almost escaped from Mary's lips, but she smothered it.
"And I called to him 'au revoir!'" she whispered to herself. "God grant I may never, never see him again."
The day after the events we have just related,--that is to say, on the 7th of May, 1832,--a great dinner-party was given at the château de Vouillé, to celebrate the birthday of Madame la Comtesse de Vouillé, who had on that day completed her twenty-fourth year.
The company had just sat down to table, and at this table, among twenty-five other guests, was the prefect of Vienne and the mayor of Châtellerault, relations more or less distant of Madame de Vouillé.
The soup was just removed when a servant entered the dining-room, and said a few words in Monsieur de Vouillé's ear. Monsieur de Vouillé made the man repeat them twice. Then addressing his guests, he said:--