The Abbess Of Vlaye

The horse looked piteously at the man. Blood oozed from its broken knees and its legs quivered under it. The man holding his scratched and abraded hand to his mouth returned the...

An hour or two later the Lieutenant awoke suddenly. He rose on his elbow, and listened. Inured to a life of change which had cast him many times into strange beds and the compan...

Had Bonne de Villeneuve, a day earlier, paid a visit much in fashion at that time, and consulted the "dark man" who, in an upper room on the wall of Angoulême, followed the star...

Sheer amazement held the Vicomte silent. The Countess of Rochechouart, of the proud house of Longueville, that in those days yielded place to scarce a house in France--the Count...

Danger, that by night sends forth a vanguard of fears, and quells the spirits before it delivers the attack, pursues a different course by day, seeking to surprise rather than t...

The Vicomte gasped; it was evident, it was certain, that M. de Vlaye knew all. What was he to say, what to do? While Bonne, though her ear hung upon his reply, was conscious onl...

To all things there comes an end, even to long silences and the march of uneventful years. Summer evening after summer evening had looked its last through darkening tree-tops on...

As he groped his way towards the door, he came into contact with Roger, who was also making for it. Roger gripped him and tried to hold him. "Is there no other way?" the lad mut...

The elder of the Villeneuve brothers was less happy than Roger, in that the Vicomte had passed to him a portion of his crabbed nature. Something of the bitterness, something of...

Bonne's first thought when her brother darted to the stranger's rescue was to seek aid from Ampoule, who, it will be remembered, sat drinking beside the fire in the outer hall....

It was after midnight, and the young moon had set when they came, a long procession of riders, to the ford in which des Ageaux had laved his horse's legs on the evening of his a...

Something after high noon des Ageaux appeared and, whatever the Abbess's feelings, he was overjoyed to find the three undisturbed. He despatched a flying party down the valley t...

There is born of the enthusiasm of self-denial a happiness that while the fervour lasts seems all-sufficing. The skirmish that has routed the van of jealousy stands for the batt...

An hour later the Lieutenant was with the Duke in his quarters, and had imparted to him what he knew of the position. The Duke listened, not much affected; nay, with something a...

The Abbess was not present that evening when the hostages transferred themselves to the peasants' side of the camp. Had she witnessed the scene she had found, it is possible, ma...

To do or not to do? How many a one has turned the question in his mind; this one in the solitude of his locked room, seated with frowning face and eyes fixed on nothingness; tha...

The moon had just dropped below the narrow horizon of the camp, but to eyes which looked up from the blackness of the hollow the form of the nearest sentinel, erect on the edge...

It is possible that Bonne did not herself know in what proportions pity and a warmer sentiment entered into her motives when she undertook to pass for the Countess and assume th...

The four who looked to the door of the Duke's hut, and waited for the news, were not relieved as quickly as they expected. When men return with no news they are apt to forget th...

That Bonne failed to read the dark scroll of her sister's thoughts need not surprise us; since apart from the tie of blood the two women had nothing in common. But that she fail...

Roger had little faith in the priest's power, and less in his willingness to aid them. But at worst he was not to be kept in suspense. By good luck, Father Benet was walking at...

The Countess knew that her knees were shaking under her. The gaze, too, of the men who watched was dreadful to her. She felt her feet slipping from the shoes; she felt the kerch...

The Abbess left alone in the garden-chamber listened intently; looking now on the door which had closed on her rival, now on the windows, whence it was just possible that she mi...

Though it was not des Ageaux' fate to lie in one of those underground dungeons, noisome and dark, which the lords of an earlier century had provided in the foundations of the ca...

The man who had struck the blow, and whose eyes still sparkled with fury, turned them upon her. He took note of her stupor, frowned, and with a swift, cruel glance searched the...