"What is that?" asked she, stooping down to pick it up.
"Nothing," answered Bathilde quickly, forgetting that Nanette could not read, "only a paper which has fallen out of my pocket." Then, after an instant's pause, and with a visible effort, "and which you may throw on the fire," continued she.——"But perhaps it may be something important; see what it is, at all events, mademoiselle." And Nanette presented the letter to Bathilde.
The temptation was too strong to resist. Bathilde cast her eyes on the paper, affecting an air of indifference as well as she could, and read as follows:
"They say you are an orphan: I have no parents; we are, then, brother and sister before God. This evening I run a great danger; but I hope to come out of it safe and sound if my sister—Bathilde—will pray for her brother Raoul."
"You are right," said Bathilde, in a moved voice, and taking the paper from the hands of Nanette, "that paper is more important than I thought;" and she put D'Harmental's letter in the pocket of her apron. Five minutes after Nanette, who came in twenty times a day without any particular reason, went out as she had entered, and left Bathilde alone.
Bathilde had only just glanced at the letter, and it had seemed to dazzle her. As soon as Nanette was gone she read it a second time.
It would have been impossible to have said more in fewer words. If D'Harmental had taken a whole day to combine every word of the billet, instead of writing on the spur of the moment, he could not have done it better. Indeed, he established a similarity of position between himself and the orphan; he interested Bathilde in her neighbor's fate on account of a menacing danger, a danger which would appear all the greater to the young girl from her not knowing its nature; and, finally, the expression brother and sister, so skillfully glided in at the end, and to ask a simple prayer, excluded from these first advances all idea of love.
It followed, therefore, that, if at this moment Bathilde had found herself vis-a-vis with D'Harmental, instead of being embarrassed and blushing, as a young girl would who had just received her first love-letter, she would have taken him by the hand and said to him, smiling—"Be satisfied, I will pray for you." There remained, however, on the mind of Bathilde something more dangerous than all the declarations in the world, and that was the idea of the peril which her neighbor ran. By a sort of presentiment with which she had been seized on seeing him, with a face so different from his ordinary expression, nail the crimson ribbon to his window, and withdraw it directly the captain entered, she was almost sure that the danger was somehow connected with this new personage, whom she had never seen before. But how did this danger concern him? What was the nature of the danger itself? This was what she asked herself in vain. She thought of a duel, but to a man such as the chevalier appeared to be, a duel was not one of those dangers for which one asks the prayers of women; besides, the hour named was not suitable to duels. Bathilde lost herself in her conjectures; but, in losing herself, she thought of the chevalier, always of the chevalier, and of nothing but the chevalier; and, if he had calculated upon such an effect, it must be owned that his calculations were wofully true for poor Bathilde.
The day passed; and, whether it was intentional, or whether it was that he was otherwise employed, Bathilde saw him no more, and his window remained closed. When Buvat came home as usual, at ten minutes after four, he found the young girl so much preoccupied that, although his perspicacity was not great in such matters, he asked her three or four times if anything was wrong; each time she answered by one of those smiles which supplied Buvat with enough to do in looking at her; and it followed that, in spite of these repeated questions, Bathilde kept her secret.
After dinner M. Chaulieu's servant entered—he came to ask Buvat to spend the evening with his master. The Abbe Chaulieu was one of Buvat's best patrons, and often came to his house, for he had taken a great liking for Bathilde. The poor abbe became blind, but not so entirely as not to be able to recognize a pretty face; though it is true that he saw it across a cloud. The abbe had told Bathilde, in his sexagenarian gallantry, that his only consolation was that it is thus that one sees the angels.