nd the Count of Crevecoeur, breaking out, "Aroint thee, deceitful
witch!--Why, this device smells rank as the toasted cheese in a rat
trap.--Now fie, and double fie, upon the old decoy duck!"

The Countess of Crevecoeur gravely rebuked her husband for his violence.

"The Lady," she said, "must have been deceived by De la Marck with a
show of courtesy."

"He show courtesy!" said the Count. "I acquit him of all such
dissimulation. You may as well expect courtesy from a literal wild
boar, you may as well try to lay leaf gold on old rusty gibbet irons.
No--idiot as she is, she is not quite goose enough to fall in love with
the fox who has snapped her, and that in his very den. But you women
are all alike--fair words carry it--and, I dare say, here is my pretty
cousin impatient to join her aunt in this fool's paradise, and marry the
Bear Pig."

"So far from being capable of such folly," said Isabelle, "I am doubly
desirous of vengeance on the murderers of the excellent Bishop, because
it will, at the same time, free my aunt from the villain's power."

"Ah! there indeed spoke the voice of Croye!" exclaimed the Count, and no
more was said concerning the letter.

But while Isabelle read her aunt's epistle to her friends, it must
be observed that she did not think it necessary to recite a certain
postscript, in which the Countess Hameline, lady-like, gave an account
of her occupations, and informed her niece that she had laid aside for
the present a surcoat which she was working for her husband, bearing the
arms of Croye and La Marck in conjugal fashion, parted per pale, because
her William had determined, for purposes of policy, in the first action
to have others dressed in his coat armour and himself to assume the arms
of Orleans, with a bar sinister--in other words, those of Dunois. There
was also a slip of paper in another hand, the contents of which the
Countess did not think it necessary to mention, being simply these
words: "If you hear not of me soon, and that by the trumpet of Fame,
conclude me dead, but not unworthy."

A thought, hitherto repelled as wildly incredible, now glanced with
double keenness through Isabelle's soul. As female wit seldom fails in
the contrivance of means, she so ordered it that ere the troops were
fully on march, Quentin Durward received from an unknown hand the billet
of Lady Hameline, marked with three crosses opposite to the postscript,
and having these words subjoined: "He who feare