(1)
When the laitière came at half-past six that morning she was sorry to hear that Mme Vidal was indisposed, but not ill-pleased to sell her, in consequence, a double portion of milk. So indisposed indeed was the concierge that she requested Toinon, when she returned to the village, to get conveyed to Paris a note to her niece Mme Tessier, asking the latter to make a few purchases and to visit her.
The sympathetic Toinon gone, Mme de Trélan went back to her patient. Long before this he had come to himself for the second time, and she had fed him with the milk she had reserved for her morning coffee, in a spoon. He took it drowsily, like a child, and dropped off to sleep again.
She thought him asleep now when she came in, and went about noiselessly putting the dark little bedroom to rights, preoccupied all the time with one thought, this boy’s safety. The thought divided itself into two parts; how to secure proper attention for his wound, and how to get the boy himself away without discovery. Her unpractised investigation of his hurt had already led her to suppose that it was a glancing flesh wound off the ribs, probably not dangerous, save from the amount of blood he seemed to have lost. Why he had risked coming by it she had not even a guess.
But though she thought him asleep she saw, after a minute or two, as she passed by the bed, that his eyes were open and that he was looking at her. He was very flushed.
“Is there anything you want, mon enfant?” she asked, stopping.
He continued to look at her mutely, then made these brief statements:
“My name is Roland de Céligny. I ought not to have come. Now I shall be endangering you. Madame, I implore you to let me go!”
“Chut!” retorted Valentine, laying her hand for a second on his forehead. “How could you go, even if I would let you? There is no need, I assure you, to trouble about me. Besides, why should I not care for a wounded man whom I find in the garden. You are not a malefactor, Monsieur de Céligny!”
“Mais si, Madame,” replied Roland earnestly. “In intention, at least . . . that is just what I am. . . . You ought to give me up.”