I paused a moment in sheer bewilderment. Here was a problem!
“Perhaps it is my duty also to deliver you to your family,” I remarked at last, but my heart was not in the words.
“Ah, you would not say so, Monsieur, if you knew the story!” and she looked up at me beseechingly, her eyes bright with tears. There was no mistaking this time, and I, certainly, could not resist their appeal, which sent the blood bounding in my temples.
“Come,” I said, “we must get away from here, at any rate, or your amiable uncle will return with reënforcements and surprise us. Take my arm, Mademoiselle.”
She did so without hesitation, and I led her across the Rue St. Honoré and into the gardens of the Tuileries. The place was thronged with people, as it always is in the evening, summer or winter, and, deciding that no one could discover us among so many, I found an unoccupied seat under the trees near the river, where I installed her.
On the way, I had reflected on the situation in which I found myself, and its complete absurdity struck me for the first time. Here was I, a young man alone in Paris, knowing no one, with no fortune but youth’s hope for the future, assuming the protection of a pretty girl of sixteen or seventeen, whom I had never seen until ten minutes since and whose name I did not even know.
I could not help laughing as I seated myself beside her. She looked at me for a moment with a glance clear and unembarrassed, but in which there was nothing bold nor immodest, and then, comprehending my thought, she threw back her head and laughed with me. I was enchanted, and in my admiration forgot my mirth. I saw that her throat was full, round, and white, that her chin was adorable, that there were dimples in her cheeks, that her mouth was finely arched, and her teeth small and regular. I felt a sudden warmth about my heart. Plainly here was a girl innocent as well as beautiful, and who looked at the world with eyes in which there was no trace of jaundice or suspicion. Harm such a one? Not I!
“Come, Mademoiselle,” I said at last, “it is necessary for us to arrive at an understanding of the situation. You behold in me Pierre le Moyne, late of Mont-de-Marsan, but for a week past and I trust for the future, of Paris, and, I repeat, wholly at your service,” and as I said the word I arose and bowed before her.
She acknowledged my bow with a pretty little nod of the head.
“And I, M. le Moyne,” she answered, “am Mademoiselle Anne Ribaut; although I much prefer to be called Nanette, and, I fear, very greatly in need of your services.”