CHAPTER XLV.
THE BOASTING OF GILLES DE SILLE But, as fate would have it, it was not in the Hotel de Pornic nor yet in the city of Paris that Laurence O'Halloran was destined to enter the service of the most mighty Marshal de Retz.
Not till three days after his converse with the prisoner did Laurence find an opportunity of escaping from the house in the street of the Ursulines.

Sholto and his father meantime kept their watch upon the mansion of the enemy, turn and turn about; but without discovering anything pertinent to their purpose, or giving Laurence a chance to get clear off with Gilles de Sille.

The Lord James had also frequently adventured forth, as he declared, in order to spy out the land, though it is somewhat sad to relate that this espionage conducted itself in regions which gave more opportunities for investigating the peculiar delights of Paris than of discovering the whereabouts of Maud Lindesay and his cousin, the Fair Maid of Galloway.
The head of Gilles de Sille was still swathed in bandages when, with an additional swaddling of disguise across his eyes, he and Laurence, that truant scion of the house of O'Halloran, stole out into the night.

A frosty chill had descended with the darkness, and a pale, dank mist from the marshes of the Seine made the pair shiver as arm in arm they ventured carefully forth.
Laurence was doing a foolish, even a wicked, thing in thus, without warning, deserting his companions.

But he was just at the age when it is the habit of youth to deceive themselves with the thought that a shred of good intent covers a world of heedless folly.
The fugitives found the Hotel de Pornic practically deserted.