misery and
foreboding--she flung herself upon her knees before him in the hard,
frost-bound road, and lifting up her clasped hands she cried:

"Oh, monsieur, forgive me, pardon me! I did but leave the child for
ten moments, and----"

"And," said St. Georges, his face growing almost darker than before,
"it is stolen, or dead! Is that what you have come to tell me?"

"Alas! alas!" she moaned, "that it should be so. Stolen, not dead,
thank God. Oh, monsieur," and again the coarse, hard-working hands
were clasped and lifted up before his face, "_ayez pitie, je_----"

"Be brief," the _chevau-leger_ interrupted, taking no heed of her
wailings, while the old and young man started at the misery revealed
by the changed tones of his voice. "Be brief. I confided my child to
you, and you have failed in your trust. Tell me how. Then I may know
how to act. Proceed."

"Oh, monsieur," the poor creature said, wondering that, ere now, he
had not torn her to pieces or thrust his sword through her, as would
likely enough have been done by many of her own kind under a similar
breach of faith--"oh, monsieur, my heart is broken, my heart----"

"No matter for your heart," St. Georges interrupted her peremptorily
again; "tell your story at once. At once, I say!" And again the two
standing by wondered that he could master himself so, in spite of his
grief; while the girl, seeing that she had best obey him, told with
many sobs, which still she could not repress, what had happened.

It was in the early morning, she said, and she and the little thing
had slept warm and peacefully together--oh, so peacefully!--and the
time had come for her to arise; the hostler had come to knock on her
door, for she slept heavily. Then he told her, as he stood outside,
that a troop of the Vicomte d'Arpajou's regiment was come in and
seeking billets in the town; and she, because she was _une
malheureuse_, and also because she had a cousin who rode in the ranks,
got up and ran downstairs to get news of him. For his mother had heard
nothing of him for many months; they were anxious--oh, so anxious! But
it was not his troop, and so, gleaning no news, she had returned to
her bedroom, meaning to finish her dressing and to prepare the child.
And then, she went on, sobbing again, and with more wringings of her
hands--and then, oh! horror, she found the bed empty and the child
gone. Gone! Gone! Gone! Oh, it was terrible! She aroused the other
servants with her screa