"Henri—he is here!"
And into the prostrate man's somewhat limited field of vision came a dark, good-looking young man whose resemblance to Mme. de Guéfontaine proclaimed his relationship. His sister slipped her arm into his.
("Now I wonder," thought Fortuné, "how far her fraternal affection for this brother would carry her!")
"Monsieur," began Henri du Coudrais, with emotion, standing looking down upon the Chouan. "I have no words to express my apologies, my gratitude, or my sense of your magnanimity. But why did you not tell my sister the truth?"
"Monsieur," replied La Vireville from the floor, "I began to do so, but . . . had not time to finish. And I do not think that I should have been believed. . . . But permit me to say, M. du Coudrais, that if I had a sister, and she had been placed in like circumstances, I could only be flattered if her affection for me had led her to do the same, in all things, as Madame has done."
Mme. de Guéfontaine lifted her head from her brother's shoulder, against which she had suddenly hidden her face. "In all things?" she repeated, stressing the words, and with something like a remembered horror in her eyes.
Fortuné de la Vireville raised himself a trifle, while his fingers, as if unconsciously, tapped out a little tune on the handle of his hunting-knife. "Yes," he said, smiling at her meaningly and half-mischievously, "in all things!"
And the old beams, which had heard so many wise and foolish utterances, caught and flung to each other his perverse and fantastic condonation.