By the time that Aurore and the Abbé Rosemonde had finished sorting out the treasures of the old leather trunk Talon had left the château. Aurore found her father looking thoughtful.

"That rascal Talon," he said presently, speaking as it were to himself, "is no fool. His advice is sound." He drew the girl to him and looked searchingly into her eager young face. "My little Aurore," he went on wistfully, "would you like to put all these horrors behind you and seek refuge somewhere where we could have peace?"

"You mean - emigrate, Father?"

"Why not?"

"And lose Marigny? They confiscate everything if one emigrates."

"If it could be done without losing Marigny?"

"Even so...?"

"You don't want to go?"

"I want to do whatever you think is right; but - I love Marigny." And Aurore's dreamy eyes, full of a vague yearning, swept over the beautiful vista around, the wooded slopes, the distant ribbon of the Allier whispering among the reeds, the steeples of the village churches peeping out between the clumps of sycamore and walnut. All this meant home to her. She had never known another. Even the palace in Paris had been but a pied-à-terre for her: Marigny alone was home. "I love it," she reiterated with a sigh. "I know every tree in the forest, every shrub in the coppice, the call of every bird. To go away into the unknown frightens me, somehow."

"Now, that is sheer childishness, Aurore," her father said sternly. "My dear Abbé, help me to get those silly fancies out of her head."

The old priest had stood by in discreet silence, ostensibly engrossed in looking over again the old clothes he was going to distribute in the village. At Aurore's outburst he looked up, and now that Monseigneur appealed to him he came and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"I should miss you terribly in the village, my child," he said, "but I agree with your father. If it can be done, it would be wiser to go away. It will only be for a time."

"Do they hate us here so much as all that?" she asked. Probably she would have broken down then and had a good cry. It seemed so cruel that, in spite of every effort towards forgiveness and charity, it was impossible to combat that hatred which a lot of irresponsible and cruel demagogues had instilled into the hearts of the people of France. But Aurore met her father's anxious, loving glance fixed upon her: young as she was, she knew that he depended on her for every tiny gleam of joy or happiness that she was able to give, and also that at sight of her grief his bitter resentment and suffering would increase a hundredfold. So she swallowed her tears, gave her father a good kiss, then turned once more to the old priest, smiling through her tears:

"Let us go straightway to the village now, M. le Curé," she said. "I do want the Legendre children to have those stockings soon. And," she added with a light laugh, "I have not yet done my marketing to-day."

It was late afternoon when Aurore de Marigny made her way back from the village toward the château. Jeannette was with her and carried her market basket. She was an elderly woman who had served the ducal family almost from childhood, when she began life as a scullery wench. She had lost mother, father, kindred, one after the other, and gradually her whole life became entirely dependent upon the château. When approaching middle age she had married Pierre, one of the men-servants, and after that had carried on just as before. She never had any children. Somehow she had never wanted any. And then when, one by one, the other servants of the château ran away, terrified lest they should be identified with unpopular aristos, Pierre and Jeannette had stayed on, chiefly because they had nowhere else to go. What few services were required of them - the little bit of cooking and cleaning - they did quite ungrudgingly but without enthusiasm. They seemed to have become a pair of automatons, with undeveloped brains and a vague protective instinct towards Aurore de Marigny and Monseigneur who gave them shelter and food.

Together Aurore and Jeannette walked rapidly along the road, which at this point follows the river bank until it branches off to the wooded slopes which lead up to the château. They had gone past the last two or three outlying cottages, and the road stretched out before them like a white ribbon, sun-baked, dusty, and solitary. They had seen no one for some time when, suddenly, a man came into view around a bend, walking slowly towards them. He looked wearied, ragged, and dirty, but in this was no different from many other wayfarers on the high roads these days; but there was something in his limping gait, in his stooping shoulders, and in his head, which fell forward on his chest and rolled round and round as if insecurely held by his neck, which gave the idea of fatigue verging on complete collapse.

As the man drew nearer Aurore perceived that he wore a military coat and breeches, both in the last stages of decay, and that he had no shoes on his feet, which were bleeding and covered with grime. His head was bare, and a shocked of chestnut-brown tousled hair fell like a mop over his face. Aurore noted, also, that the right sleeve of his tattered coat was hanging empty.

Obviously, a miserable soldier, making his way home from the way. As he came close up to the two women he stumbled and would certainly have fallen had not Aurore put out her arms. Instinctively, with his one hand he seized hold of hers, and remained quite still for a moment or two, trying to steady himself and clinging blindly to this unexpected support. Then he raised his head and shook the mop of hair away from his face. Aurore encountered a pair of dark eyes, lack-lustre and glassy, and with an unseeing vagueness in their dilated pupils. She did not dare move for fear of seeing the man fall at her feet, but she half turned her head to Jeannette and said quickly:

"That drop of wine in the small bottle... give it here...."

At sound of the voice the glassiness went out of the man's eyes. The pupils contracted, and a deep frown appeared between his brows. He seemed suddenly to realize that the prop which supported him was a woman's arm, and with a great effort he steadied himself on his feet. A curious light flashed from his eyes, which seemed to sweep Aurore from head to foot.

Jeannette muttered something about wasting good stuff which had cost so much to procure, but Aurore spoke impatiently:

"The bottle, Jeannette! Quick!"

Under the man's curious sweeping glance she felt her cheeks flushing, but still she did not move, holding out her arm quite stiffly until his hold on it relaxed. Then she frowned and turned her head away, for the man was staring at her still, and there was something in that stare, a certain contempt or even enmity, which almost caused her to take to her heels and run. But she held her round, and when, presently, Jeannette handed her the bottle, she took it and held it out to the man. With a sweep of his arm he brushed it away, then threw back his head and laughed. It was a strange laugh, hard and mirthless, which caused the suspicion of a shiver to run down Aurore's spine - a shiver not of fear (for what was there to fear in this miserable, maimed creature?), but of recoil, as if in the presence of something weird and not altogether earthly. But that was only a momentary weakness: the man looked so unutterably wretched that tears of pity, never absent from the depths of Aurore's sympathetic head, welled up to her eyes. Instinctively she felt, however, that pity in this case would be unwelcome; repulsed, perhaps, with that contempt which still lingered in the man's eyes; so she closed her own for a moment or two, lest the tears trickle down her cheeks.

When she opened them again the man had passed by.

"Come, Jeannette," Aurore said quickly, "let us get home."

Jeanette, stolid and silent, had rearranged the market basket and started to walk beside her mistress.

"Thank goodness," she said, "this good wine was not wasted. It would have been a sin to deprive Monseigneur of it for the sake of that down-at-heel vagabond."

After a while she added: "You know who that was, don't you, mademoiselle?"

"No," Aurore replied. "How should I?"

"It was André Vallon. I knew him at once, though he looks a miserable bag of bones now."

"André Vallon?"

"Marianne's son. Mademoiselle must recollect."

"But how should I?" Aurore reiterated frowning.

Mechanically, however, she had paused for a moment and turned round to look at the retreating figure. Strangely enough, the man, too, had paused and looked back; and once more their eyes met. There was a distance of some ten metres between them now: the man, whoever he was, shrugged and laughed as soon as he had caught her glance; then he turned and went his way; but Aurore was again conscious of that vague sense of terror, as if something fateful and irresistible had come across her path. It was nonsense, of course. Again and again she said to herself: "What is there to fear?" Unfortunately, these days, inimical glances were more familiar to her than kindly ones; she was accustomed to looks of derision, even of hatred, to threatening words and menace of violence. The wretched vagabond who had just gone by had not spoken; had threatened with neither word nor gesture; but never in all these fateful days had she encountered a glance so full of latent contempt and almost unearthly hatred.

"Tell me about this - this André Vallon - was that the name?" she said presently to Jeannette, while together the two of them walked up the slope.

Jeannette, whose powers of narration were limited, began a long and involved tale on the subject. She talked of André and his mother; of the boy's early turbulent life in the village which ended abruptly and violently in a public whipping in the market square for disorderly conduct. Jeannette could not remember the details, but she had heard it said in the village that young Vallon had sworn deadly enmity against all those who had been present and seen his humiliation.

"He went up to Paris after that," Jeannette went on to relate, "and got under the thumb of that murdering blackguard Danton. So I shouldn't wonder if he has become just such another assassin himself. I shouldn't care to meet him alone on the road. But, as I used to say to his mother long ago, she would spoil him. She let him think he was somebody, though he was nothing better, even in those days, then a young ne'er-do-weel. And the woman spoilt him, too, because he had flashing eyes and a way with him. Dirty young blackguard, I call him."

She went meandering on, not caring whether her mistress listened to her or not. She had the usual anecdotes to tell of André's turpitude, and the perpetual mischief he would get into, causing his mother endless worry.

Aurore only listened with half an ear. Vague memories floated through her mind of a glorious day such as this in mid-July. Her birthday. her young friends. A game of blindman's bluff. And then the face of a boy with flashing black eyes, a shock of chestnut hair from which the hot sun drew glints of shining copper, and of a brown, slender hand holding a futile, useless pocketknife.

It all seemed like a dream now. Later on she had heard the story of the same boy being publicly whipped in the market square for having killed Hector Talon's savage dog, and she remembered feeling sorry for him, because already in those days she had instinctively disliked Talon. How it all came back now! Her pity for the boy, her dread at sight of his flashing dark eyes and of his beautiful face convulsed with rage because Pierre de Mauléon had slapped his cheek. And the heavy scent of earth which had offended her nostrils when, blindfolded, she fell against his breast.