"Good Heavens! what is the matter? Has anything happened to him?"
"Ah, mother," suddenly replied the youth, who had taken advantage of the moment during which he had been hidden from Madame Bastien's sight to wipe away his tears. Then bowing with a distrait air to Doctor Dufour, whom he had always treated with such affectionate cordiality before, Frederick approached his mother and said:
"Come, mother, let us go."
"Frederick," exclaimed Marie, seizing her son's hands and anxiously scrutinising his features, "Frederick, you have been weeping."
"No," he responded, stamping his foot impatiently, and roughly disengaging his hands from his mother's grasp. "Come, let us go, I say."
"But he has been weeping, has he not, monsieur?" again turning to David with a half-questioning, half-frightened air.
"Well, yes, I have been weeping," replied Frederick, with a sarcastic smile, "weeping for gratitude, for this gentleman here," pointing to David, "prevented me from falling out of the window. Now, mother, you know all. Come, let us go."
And Frederick turned abruptly toward the door.
Doctor Dufour, no less surprised and grieved than Madame Bastien, turned to David.
"My friend, what does this mean?" he asked.