He bent his head and muttered something of which her sister caught not a word. Then, "But we must not waste time," he continued briskly. "Let us--with the Vicomte's permission--to the field! To the field!" And he turned his horse as he spoke into the sled-road that led around the courtyard wall; and by a gesture he bade his men follow. It was evident to Bonne, evident to her father, that he had had a spy on the house, and knew where his quarry harboured.
The girl wondered whether by flying through the house and dropping from the corner of the garden wall she could even now give the alarm. Then M. le Vicomte spoke. "I will come with you," he said in a surly tone that betrayed his sense of his position. "The times are indeed out of joint, and persons out of their places, but--Solomon, my staff! Daughter," to the Abbess, "a hold of your stirrup-leather! It is but a step, and I can still walk so far. If the field be unsafe for the guest,"--he added grimly--"it is fit the host should share the danger."
Bonne could have blessed him for the thought, for his offer bound the party to a walking pace, and something might happen. Vlaye, beyond doubt, had the same thought. But without breaking openly with the Vicomte--which for various reasons he was loth to do--he could not reject his company nor outpace him.
He raised no objection, therefore, and in displeased silence the Vicomte walked beside his daughter's horse, Bonne accompanying him on the other hand. She knew more than he, and had reason to fear more; she was almost sick with anxiety. But he, perhaps, suffered more. Forced on his own ground to do that which he did not wish to do, forced to play a sorry farce, he felt, as he trudged in the van of the party, that he walked the captive in a Roman triumph. And he could have smitten the Captain of Vlaye across the face.
They passed only too quickly from the shelter of the house to the open meadows and the hot sunshine, and so over the stone bridge. Bonne knew that at this point they must become visible to the workers in the hay-field, and she counted on an interval of a few minutes during which the fugitives might take steps to hide themselves, or even to get over the river and bury themselves in the woods. She could have cried, therefore, when, without apparent order, a party from the rear cantered past the leaders and, putting their horses into a sharp hand-gallop, preceded them in their advance upon the panic-stricken haymakers, in the midst of whom they drew rein in something less than a minute.