She smiled gently at his words, and turned the conversation to the matter that imported most.
“Tonight then, it is determined that we are to go?”
“At midnight or a little after. Be in readiness, mademoiselle, and do not keep me waiting when I rap upon your door. Haste may be of importance.”
“You may count upon me, my friend,” she answered him, and stirred by a sudden impulse she held out her hand. “You have been very good to me, Monsieur de Garnache. You have made life very different for me since your coming. I had it in my mind to blame you once for your rashness in returning alone. I was a little fool. You can never know the peace that has come to me from having you at hand. The fears, the terrors that possessed me before you came have all been dispelled in this last week that you have been my sentry in two senses.”
He took the hand she held out to him, and looked down at her out of his grimy, disfigured face, an odd tenderness stirring him. He felt as might have felt a father towards his daughter--at least, so thought he then.
“Child,” he answered her, “you overrate it. I have done no less than I could do, no more than any other would have done.”
“Yet more than Florimond has done--and he my betrothed. A touch of fever was excuse enough to keep him at La Rochette, whilst the peril of death did not suffice to deter you from coming hither.”
“You forget, mademoiselle, that, maybe, he does not know your circumstances.”
“Maybe he does not,” said she, with a half-sigh. Then she looked up into his face again. “I am sad at the thought of going, monsieur,” she surprised him by saying.
“Sad?” he cried. Then he laughed. “But what can there be to sadden you?”
“This, monsieur: that after to-night it is odds I shall never see you more.” She said it without hesitation and without coquetry, for her upbringing had been simple and natural in an atmosphere different far from that in which had been reared the courtly women he had known. “You will return to Paris and the great world, and I shall live out my life in this, little corner of Dauphiny. You will forget me in the bustle of your career, monsieur; but I shall always hold your memory very dear and very gratefully. You are the only friend I have ever known since my father died excepting Florimond, though it is so long since I have seen him, and he never came to me in times of stress as you have done.”