But they remained unscathed, and every succeeding moment he felt her hold tightening upon his arm, whilst a delicious fragrance as of spring air laden with blossom seemed to come from her entire person, and the soft tendrils of her fair hair brushed against his cheek like a fairy's kiss.
"I don't think that I shall be able to walk," said Fernande ruefully, as she clung more firmly with both her hands to his arm.
"Will you try?" he suggested. "Lean on me and let me support you. Don't be afraid. Perhaps if you held the stick with one hand and...."
"And," she interposed decisively, in perfectly matter-of-fact tone, "if you will put your arm round my waist, I think that perhaps...."
He did as he was told, and felt the whole weight of her lissom body against his arm.
"There, now," she said, "if I can put my foot to the ground...."
She tried. But the movement wrung a cry of pain from her lips. She fell back against the broad shoulder which was so conveniently held for her support and leaned her head against it. She closed her eyes as if ready to swoon. De Maurel was ready to anathematize Heaven for perpetrating such wanton cruelty against a being so perfect and so frail.
A pair of blue eyes that were swimming in tears were turned dolefully up to him.
"I fear me that I shall have to remain breakfastless, after all," murmured Fernande, with lips that quivered like those of a child about to cry. "I pray you leave me, dear cousin. You cannot afford to waste your time over the ailments of an insignificant person like me. Perhaps you may find some one in the village good enough to take a message over to my father by and by, asking him to send Père Lebrun's carriole hither. But oh! I pray you haste! I shall be so desperately hungry ere the carriole come."
"Mademoiselle Fernande," rejoined de Maurel earnestly, "you have, I've no doubt, every excuse for looking upon me as an ill-mannered cur, but none, I think, for imagining that I am an inhuman wretch. Nothing would induce me to leave you here ... in this lonely spot ... alone and in pain...."