"Yes!" cried D'Épernon; "yes, he is saved, dear love; he is at my heels, you will see him in a moment."
Nanon fairly leaped for joy; these few words removed from her breast the weight that was stifling her. She raised her hands to heaven, and, with her face wet with the tears this unhoped for happiness drew from her eyes, which despair had made dry, cried in an indescribable tone:—
"Oh! my God, my God! I thank thee!"
As she brought her eyes back to earth, she saw at her side the Duc d'Épernon, so happy in her happiness that one would have said his interest in the dear prisoner was no less deep than hers. Not until then did this disturbing thought come to her mind:—
"How will the duke be recompensed for his kindness, his solicitude, when he sees the stranger in the brother's place, an almost adulterous passion substituted for the pure sentiment of sisterly affection?"
Her reply to her own question was short and to the point.
"No matter!" she thought, "I will deceive him no longer; I will tell him the whole story; he will turn me Out and curse me; then I will throw myself at his feet to thank him for all he has done for me these three years past, and that done, I will go hence poor and humble, but rich in my love, and happy in the anticipation of the new life that awaits us."
In the midst of this dream of self-denial, of ambition sacrificed to love, the throng of servants opened to give passage to a man who rushed into the room where Nanon lay, crying:—
"My sister! my dear sister!"
Nanon sat up in bed, opened her startled eyes to their fullest extent, turned paler than the belaced pillow behind her head, and for the second time fell back in consternation, muttering:—