"By giving me your confidence," interrupted the girl, who in her secret heart was delighted at the stand the young officer had taken. She would have despised him if he had succumbed to the temptation of which she herself was part.
"I could do no less, mademoiselle," returned Marteau. "I and my forbears have served your house and known it and loved it for eight hundred years."
"I know it," answered the girl. "I value the association. I am proud of it."
"And since you know it and recognize it perhaps you will tell me how you happen to be here."
"Willingly," answered Mademoiselle Laure. "The estates are to be sold. There are deeds and papers of value in the château without which transactions could not be completed. I alone knew where they were. With Monsieur Yeovil, my uncle's friend and the father of——" she hesitated and then went on, "so I came to France."
"But with the invading armies——"
"There was no other way. The Czar Alexander gave me a safe conduct. A company of his guards escorted us. Sir Gervaise Yeovil was accredited to Lord Castlereagh, but with his permission he brought me here first. My uncle was too old to come. Arrived here we found the Cossacks, the wagon-train. There was a battle, a victory, pursuit. Then those villains seized us. They stole upon us unsuspecting, having murdered the sentries, and then you came."
"I see. And have you the papers?"
"They are—— Not yet, but I may take them?"
"Assuredly, so far as I am concerned," answered Marteau, "although I regret to see the old estate pass out of the hands of the ancient family."