But neither Jean nor Barbara was capable of saying a word, and though the fishermen were urgently assuring the girl that she was not safe yet, that they must go round the rocks to the gate on the other side, she remained sitting doubled up on a rock, feeling that her breath would never come into her body again.
"Let her rest a moment," suggested one wiser than the rest. "She cannot move till she breathes. There is yet time enough. Loosen her collar, and let her breathe."
The sea was gurgling at the foot of the rocks when Barbara regained her breath sufficiently to move, and she was glad enough to have strong arms to help her on her way.
Jean and his father reached the gate first, and, therefore, Mademoiselle Thérèse had already exhausted a little of her energy before Barbara appeared. But she was about to fling herself in tears upon the girl's neck when a bystander interposed.
"Let her breathe," he said. "Let her go to the inn and get nourishment." And Barbara, the centre of an eager, excited French crowd, was thankful, indeed, to shelter herself within Madame Poulard's hospitable walls.
"We will probably have to stay here a week till she recovers"—Mademoiselle Thérèse had a sympathetic audience—"she is of delicate constitution;" and the good lady was perhaps a little disappointed when Barbara declared herself perfectly able to go home in the afternoon as had been arranged.
"What should prevent us?" she asked, when after a rest and something to eat she came down to the terrace. "It was only a long race, and a fright which I quite deserved."
"Yes, indeed, a fright!" and the Frenchwoman threw up her hands. "Such fear as I felt when I came out to see the tide and saw you fleeing before it. Your aunt!—Your mother!—My charge! Such visions fleeted before my eyes. But never, never, never will I trust you with Jean any more," and she cast a vengeful look at the widower and his son, who were seated a little farther off.
"But it wasn't his fault at all," the girl explained. "On the contrary, I proposed it, and he joined me out of kindness. He pulled me along, too, over the sand. Oh, indeed, you must not be angry with Jean."
"It was very deceptive of him not to tell me—or his father. Then we could both have come with you—or explained to you that the tide rose early to-day. We heard it was to come early when you were out last night. They say," she went on, shaking her head, "if it had been an equinoctial tide, that neither of you would have escaped—there would have been no shadow of a hope for either—you would both have been drowned out there in the damp, wet sand."