“You see,” she added, still smiling, “you are weaker than you thought.”
“But I cannot lie here,” I cried half angrily. “I must get up. I have many things to do.”
I shrank somehow from asking her outright where my love was waiting, why she did not come to me. Perhaps she was ill and could not come. That injury to the ankle....
“I must get up,” I repeated doggedly; but again she held me back, her kindly eyes reading the trouble in my face.
“If you will lie still,” she said, “I will bring you some one who will tell you all you wish to know—and whom, besides, I think you will be very glad to see.”
“Thank you,” I answered, my heart beating madly. “At once?”
She nodded, went to the door and spoke a word to some one in the room beyond.
Then my heart chilled, for it was not the dear face I had hoped to see which appeared in answer to the summons, but an ugly, bearded countenance, set on gigantic shoulders. And yet, at a second glance, I saw that the countenance, though ugly, was not repulsive, that the eyes were kindly, and that the lips could smile winningly.
“M. de Tavernay,” said my nurse, bringing him to my bedside, “this is M. de Marigny.”
He bent and pressed one of my hands in his great palm, then sat down beside me, while I gazed with interest at perhaps the most famous among the leaders of the Bocage.