"Why," said La Vireville, with more animation, "if it comes to that, Madame, you were yourself under a slight misapprehension with regard to me!"
"I know! I know! Oh, can you ever forgive me?" she cried, leaving her task and kneeling down once more by his side. "I know now—it was your cousin the Marquis—but the name, the likeness, your having been at Coblentz—I felt so sure——"
"Then how do you know now?" queried La Vireville, still more puzzled.
"Because," she answered, "I have had someone to tell me the truth. I told you that I was leaving Porhoët in a day or two. I was, in fact, expecting my other brother from Guernsey to take me away—he is in the Comte d'Oilliamson's regiment there. He was to meet me here at L'Estournel, rather than come to Porhoët, because the manoir was unoccupied, and we both knew it, as it belonged once to our kin. So I made Grain d'Orge bring me here; it seemed the best thing to do, since we could not safely return to Porhoët, and Henri, when he came, could help Grain d'Orge to look for you."
She broke off, and returned to her ministrations.
"And then, Madame?" suggested her patient.
"Henri was here waiting for me! He had come earlier by a day than we had arranged. And he told me about poor André—how that it was your cousin the Marquis. Indeed, I had been already prepared for this, because Grain d'Orge spoke once or twice of you as 'Monsieur le Chevalier.' . . . All day we have been searching for you, as best we could—my brother is not yet returned. (Oh, this foot . . . what you must have suffered!) But I, when I came in a little while ago and saw you lying like a dead man across the hearthstone, I could scarcely believe it—and that fate had given me a chance after all of telling you that—a chance of undoing what I did——"
"What you did not do, rather," corrected La Vireville.
"But you thought I had—and yet you saved me!"
It was impossible categorically to deny this accusation, yet La Vireville was beginning to answer when a step was heard on the flagged floor, and Mme. de Guéfontaine sprang to her feet.