‘I know nothing of that to which this person alludes,’ continued Lachaussée to Louise. ‘M. de Sainte-Croix desires to see you, mademoiselle.’
‘To see me!’ exclaimed Louise in a tremor of excitement, not unmixed with joy. ‘Oh, M. Lachaussée! you are not trifling with me? Is this really true?’
‘You may convince yourself within a quarter of an hour,’ replied the other. ‘I have a carriage waiting at the foot of the bridge. Possibly you may conceive the reason of my mission; of that I know nothing.’
‘Do you think that I ought to go?’ asked Louise timidly of her honest host. ‘And you will not say it is unkind, leaving you at this short notice? Oh! if you knew how I have prayed to see him but once more—to speak to him again, if it were but to exchange a single word, and then bid him farewell for ever.’
‘Unkind, sweetheart?’ said Benoit, laying his rough hand upon her shoulder. ‘It would be greater unkindness in us to keep you here. Go, by all means; and recollect this is still your home if you have need of one. I will not even say good-bye. Shall I go with you?’
‘There is no occasion for that,’ said Lachaussée. ‘There are two valets with the coach, who will see mademoiselle safely back again, should she return. And here is something M. de Sainte-Croix desired me to offer to you for your care of her.’
He placed a purse in Benoit’s hand as he spoke. The Languedocian looked at it for a few seconds, peeping into its contents like a bird; and then he shook his head saying—
‘A fiftieth part of this sum would more than repay us for what we have done. No, no—I would rather you had given me a few sous—though I did not want anything. Keep it for us, Mademoiselle Louise, until you come back.’
This was Benoit’s rough method of making over the money to his late guest. Louise took it, for she did not wish to annoy him by returning it.
And then—hoping, doubting, trembling—she embraced Bathilde, and accompanied Lachaussée to the water platform of the mill. Benoit lighted her into the boat, and then remained waving his torch in adieu, until they touched the landing-place of the Quai du Châtelet. And then, with a hasty adieu to his wife, he jumped into his own light craft, and followed the direction the others had taken.