What were the Vidame's intentions?
What was the meaning of this strange journey?
What was to be Louis' fate?
I shrank with good reason from asking him these questions.

There could be so little room for hope, even after that smile which I had seen Bezers smile, that I dared not dwell upon them.
I should but torture him and myself.
So it was he who first spoke about it.

Not at that time, but after sunset, when the dusk had fallen upon us, and found us still plodding southward with tired horses; a link outwardly like other links in the long chain of riders, toiling onwards.

Then he said suddenly, "Do you know whither we are going, Anne ?" I started, and found myself struggling with a strange confusion before I could reply.

"Home," I suggested at random.
"Home?
No.