Under the heading of persons executed at Lille were the names of Ernest de St.Caux, Jules de St.Caux, Pierre du Tillet--"aristocrats arrested, August 15th, in the act of endeavouring to leave France in disguise." For some time Harry sat as if stunned.

He had scarce given a thought to his friends since that night they had left, the affairs of the marquis and his wife, of their daughters, and of Victor de Gisons, almost excluding everything else.

When he thought of the boys it had been as already in England, under the charge of du Tillet.
He had thought, that if they had been arrested on the way he should have been sure to hear of it; and he had such confidence in the sagacity of Monsieur du Tillet that he had looked upon it as almost certain he would be able to lead his two charges through any difficulty and danger which might beset them.

And now he knew that his hopes had been ill founded--that his friends had been arrested when almost within sight of the frontier, and had been murdered as soon as the news of the massacres in Paris had reached Lille.
He felt crushed with the blow.

A warm affection had sprung up between him and Ernest, while from the first the younger boy had attached himself to him; and now they were dead, and the girls were alone in the world, save for himself and the poor young fellow tossing with fever! It was true that if his friends had reached England in safety they could not have aided him in the task he had before him of getting the girls away; still their deaths somehow seemed to add to his responsibilities.
Upon one thing he determined at once, and that was, that until his charges were safely in England they should not hear a whisper of this new and terrible misfortune which had befallen them.
In order to afford the girls some slight change, and anxious at their pale faces, the result of grief and of their unwonted confinement, Louise Moulin had persuaded them to go out with her in the early mornings when she went to the markets.