He wondered, too, with a growing uneasiness, on what conceivable errand the two gentlemen could have gone out to-night, as, on his own arrival, the exhilarated Artamène had told him they had done. Why should they both go, at such an hour, and without the shadow of an escort?
Then he heard steps and voices in the passage, and stopped his pacing. They were back. His forebodings suddenly seemed ridiculous. The door was opened a little way.
“Thank you, de Brencourt. Good-night,” said Gaston’s voice, with a ring of fatigue in it. “No, thanks; the Abbé will do anything that is necessary.” And he came in.
The light in the room, emanating from a somewhat smoky lamp, did not instantly reveal his state, and he said, in a quite natural manner, “My dear Pierre! This is indeed good! And I am to congratulate you, I think?”
M. Chassin had advanced round the table to take his outstretched left hand. Nearer, he saw; and he no longer took the hand in question—he caught at it.
“Gaston! What in God’s name has happened to you? Here—sit down, for pity’s sake!”
He pulled out the nearest chair from the table, and, far from unwillingly, the wounded man sat down in it, saying as he did so, “But, my dear Pierre, why all this emotion at the sight of a little blood?”
The Abbé suddenly made use of a very unecclesiastical expression. “What has happened to you?” he repeated, standing over him.
“If you must know,” said his foster-brother, leaning back with a little smile in the chair, “I have had the bad luck to be winged by a Blue who must have been lurking in the forest, and the wound, slight in itself, has bled a good deal, that is all.—Sit down, Pierre, and tell me your news. You have succeeded—I can see it!”
How he could see it on the perturbed countenance gazing down at him was not easy to guess.