base act. I will return, in order to escort you."

So saying, he rapidly disappeared. The young lady listened to his
receding steps with evident displeasure. When the sound on the dried
leaves ceased, she stood for a moment as if confounded, then she
hastily returned to the Chouans. With a gesture of contempt she said
to Marche-a-Terre, who helped her to dismount, "That young man wants
to make regular war on the Republic! Ah, well! he'll get over that in
a few days. How he treated me!" she thought, presently.

She seated herself on the rock where the marquis had been sitting, and
silently awaited the arrival of the coach. It was one of the phenomena
of the times, and not the least of them, that this young and noble
lady should be flung by violent partisanship into the struggle of
monarchies against the spirit of the age, and be driven by the
strength of her feelings into actions of which it may almost be said
she was not conscious. In this she resembled others of her time who
were led away by an enthusiasm which was often productive of noble
deeds. Like her, many women played heroic or blameworthy parts in the
fierce struggle. The royalist cause had no emissaries so devoted and
so active as these women; but none of the heroines on that side paid
for mistaken devotion or for actions forbidden to their sex, with a
greater expiation than did this lady when, seated on that wayside
rock, she was forced to admire the young leader's noble disdain and
loyalty to principle. Insensibly she dropped into reverie. Bitter
memories made her long for the innocence of her early years, and
regret that she had escaped being a victim of the Revolution whose
victorious march could no longer be arrested by feeble hands.

The coach, which, as we now see, had much to do with the attack of the