“You are ill, Madame Blondin—ill and weak,” he said soothingly. “See”—he half lifted, half supported her into the pew—“sit down here for a moment and rest. I am afraid I frightened you. I am very sorry. Perhaps it would have been better if I had left you by yourself; but I heard you sobbing out here, and I thought that I might perhaps help you—and so I came—and so—you are better now, are you not?—-and so, you see, it was not to drive you out of the church.”
She looked at him in a sort of angry unbelief.
“Ah!” she exclaimed fiercely. “Why do you tell me that, eh? Why do you tell me that? I have no right here—and you are a priest. That is your business—to drive me out.”
“No,” said Raymond gravely; “it is not my business. And I think you would go very far, Madame Blondin, before you would find a priest who would drive you from his church under the circumstances in which I have found you here to-night.”
“Well then, I will go myself!” she said defiantly—and made as though to rise.
“No, not yet”—Raymond pressed her quietly back into the seat. “You must rest for a little while. Why, this morning, you know, you were seriously ill in bed. Surely you were not alone in the house to-night, that there was no one to prevent you getting up—I asked Madame Bouchard to——”
“Madame Bouchard came to spend the night, but I did not want her, and I sent her home,” she interrupted brusquely.
“You should not have done that, Madame Blondin,” Raymond remonstrated kindly. “But even then, you are very weak, and I do not see how you managed to get here.”
Her face set hard with the old stubborn indomitableness that he knew so well.
“I walked!” she said shortly.