“Are you ill too?” queried his visitor, peering at him. The Marquis shook his head, murmuring he knew not what, and turned away to escape her eyes. Madame Geffroi scanned what she could see of him sceptically; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, listen to me. How is the other up there?”
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert rather wildly. “I have been down here . . . my God . . . how long!”
“You don’t know!” repeated Madame Geffroi with some scorn. “But he must be either better or worse. Which is it?”
“Worse, then,” replied Château-Foix almost inaudibly.
“He has more fever?” pursued the inquisitrix. “He is perhaps light-headed—he talks nonsense?”
“That is it,” said the Marquis, and broke—to his own infinite surprise—into unmirthful laughter.
The note of hysteria did not escape his shrewd companion, though she assigned it to a wrong cause. “Come,” she said, more kindly, patting him on the arm; “you have a good heart, you suffer because your friend is ill—or is he your brother? Never mind, but listen to me! I have come to tell you something that will ease your anxiety. I have made up my mind to take your brother into my house until he is better. What have you to say to that, my young man?”
“I—but how can you?” stammered the Marquis. The twilight interview with this insistent female was like a nightmare, from which he more and more earnestly desired to escape, that he might be alone.
“How can I?” demanded the woman of resolution. “But as easily as walking. You, my fine fellow, if you got him up this ladder you can get him down again—isn’t it so?—and you can carry him to the house, a strong man like you! I shall put him in the room I keep for my niece—a small room, but comfortable. Then there will be no more fever—or at least he will have some one not quite ignorant to look after him, and he will be as snug there as a bird in its nest.”
“But, Madame,” began Gilbert, “the danger to yourself——”