“I—know.” The words came painfully from Alaine’s lips. As she took the cup away, François seized her hand and turned his face over upon it. Alaine felt hot tears from the eyes pressing her palm.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried, drawing her hand away.
“At last I understand,” he repeated. “As I cannot forgive Étienne, so you cannot forgive me. Let me tell you all. I lured you to the house in the woods that first summer that we met. The men whom you believed to be political spies were emissaries of a Jesuit who is yet working among them there in Manhatte. He is not known as aught but a Protestant, and I will not reveal his name, but it was through him that I was able to carry out the plan which we meant should result in your being removed from your home. The questions put to you were of no importance, and were but to blind you to the real object. Again I wrote the letter from Quebec, after I found you had escaped. I hoped that it might aid me in preventing your marriage to another, and I hoped to discover your hiding-place and to prevent any others from seeking you. How I have planned and plotted and set spies upon you and dogged your actions! I meant, if you should find your way back to your friends, to come to you with a letter purporting to be from your father. I had meant to do even that, to pretend that I had his consent to our marriage. I would have done even that. I think I have told you all now. If I have robbed your life of happiness, so you know I am not less miserable. I carry the burden of love denied, of revenge untasted, of ambition thwarted, of a miserable, helpless, suffering body. Mon Dieu! is it not enough? I ask you, even you, Alaine Hervieu, whom I have wronged and have hurt as I have hurt no other creature, is it not enough that with all this I must yet live and face you, and see your misery and bear this gnawing misery of knowing I have broken your heart, and that my own wretchedness is scarcely greater?”
Alaine dropped on her knees by the bedside. “Lord be merciful to us!” she cried. “Pray, François Dupont, pray!”
And François whispered, “Lord be merciful to us!”
Alaine buried her face in her hands. Sobs shook her slight frame. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” She said the words brokenly.
François timidly reached out his hand and laid it on her head. His lips moved, and when Alaine arose to her feet he looked at her with eyes so full of entreaty that she bowed her head. “God forgive you, François Dupont, and I pray that I may. I cannot yet,—I cannot,—but I pray that I may yet be able to do so.”
And then Adriaen came in. “We must make ready to start,” he said.
Alaine turned to go. “Mademoiselle,” said François, “if I could fall on my knees before you I would do it; as it is, my heart is bowed in reverence for you. God knows it would be a small thing to die for you, but I shall live, and perhaps by living a little longer I may yet do something to undo my great wrong to you. If I might, if I might.”
When she had left the room François spoke to Adriaen. He had learned enough Dutch in these weeks to carry on a halting conversation with his self-instituted nurse. “Adriaen, my good fellow, I am as full of whims as an egg is of meat. What would you say if I declared that I had determined to go back to Canada? Helpless wretch that I am, there is yet work for me to do and you must help me to do it. Will you?”