The moon that night, peering through the half-shuttered windows of the manoir, spilt on the dark floor pools that reminded La Vireville of those others in the interminable wet road of the afternoon. Mme de Guéfontaine and her brother had contrived for him a fairly comfortable resting-place by piling some old moth-eaten hangings and a cloak or two on the oak settle, and he had been made, despite his protests, to occupy this couch. But his foot pained him too much to admit of sleep.
From where he lay he could just see Mme. de Guéfontaine lying back in a great chair by the empty hearth, a cloak over her knees; and at one time the direct moonlight itself, falling on her fine, weary profile, showed a wisp or two of hair escaping down her cheek, a relic of her wild ride with the Chouan. But he knew that she slept only in snatches, and that she was concerned for him. Every time that she stirred and turned her head in his direction he deceitfully closed his eyes to delude her into the belief that he was not awake. At her feet lay her brother, wrapped in his cloak; he at least seemed to be enjoying a motionless repose, and evidences of an acoustic kind went to prove that Grain d'Orge, self-banished, out of respect, to the other end of the hall, was certainly not suffering from insomnia.
La Vireville was indeed not without occupation of a sort as he lay there wakeful and the hours went by. He was enabled to devote almost unlimited time to an interesting problem—one now, unfortunately, impossible of exact solution. Would Mme. de Guéfontaine, this modern Jael, really have stabbed him yesterday morning if he had not forestalled her? On the whole, he was almost inclined to think that she would. But probably she would not have done it very well. . . . What irony, though, if she had—if he, Augustin, after all his hazards and escapes, had ended that way, slain in his sleep by a devoted adherent of the same cause, for a private offence that he had never committed, and which the real offender had since, perhaps, almost expiated! (By the way, he must remember to tell Mme. de Guéfontaine of that.)
At any rate, he was heartily glad to know that she had not, after all, betrayed him. To the conception of her now gradually forming in his mind, such a course seemed so foreign as almost to be incredible. But he did believe that she might have used the knife.
Speculations of this kind did not, of course, advance sleep, though they kept him a little from thinking of his injured foot, which was the real obstacle to slumber. As the moon-pools ebbed away and the place became full of a ghostly grey radiance that might or might not be the dawn—for La Vireville had small idea of the time—he changed his position on the settle, thinking it might ease his foot. Stealthily as he did it, he heard Mme. de Guéfontaine stir. He repeated his expedient of shutting his eyes and lying very still. But he knew in a moment that she had risen from her chair and was bending over him, so he reopened them.
"M. le Chevalier, you cannot sleep, I know," she whispered.
"Peu importe, Madame," he replied. "But what of you?"
"If I could see you sleeping perhaps I could do the same," was her retort. "Let me renew the wet cloth round your foot; it is time it was done."
La Vireville protested, but she paid no heed. Flitting about noiselessly in that pale gloom she procured water, and, kneeling by the settle, very intently unwound the heated wrappings, dipped them in the cool liquid, and replaced them.
"Is that better?" she asked, coming like a ghost to his side.