I awoke the next morning to find Mademoiselle standing by my bedside with a potion which she bade me take. In a short while there came a chirurgeon who looked at my head, bathing and bandaging it, to the end that in an hour or so I felt so much better that I could sit upright and listen to Mademoiselle as she told me of their plans. Surely no medicine were so good for mind or body as the sight of her as she moved here and there about the room; and when she brought me my draught and leaned over to give it me, I found myself holding the cup to my lips without swallowing, taking my cure not through my lips but through my eyes.
Then says she,
“Nay, Master Sydney, you must drink it down. It is not bitter.”
No, it was not bitter. I wished that I might be always ill. But she was not impatient. She looked upon me with the eyes of friendliness and interest. What there was of coldness had disappeared from her manner; for the fancies of such as she are engulfed always in the instincts of womanhood. She put her hand upon my wrist, with fine hardihood counting the beatings of my pulse, her eyes cast upon a minute-glass. Then she smiled as she found that the fever was less, though for my part, from the thumping of my heart, I could not see that I was in any better case than I should be.
I had murmured but a word of thanks—telling her that I was better. Thus far I was content to say nothing so long as she would only stay where I might look at her. She, herself, was balm to my wounds. But when she was about to leave the room to tell her father that I had awakened, I called to her.
“Mademoiselle, just a word. It is hard to say the words of gratitude I would. I am but a yeoman of Queen Bess, a sea-rover if you like. I am without friends save yourselves, and without either money or employment. In a few days or perhaps hours you too will be gone. I shall never see you again.” I paused. “Otherwise I should not speak.”
She looked at me curiously and then moved as though to go, but I made a gesture which held her. I knew not what had come over me. The words rushed upon my tongue and I could not restrain them. I was rough and brutal in my frankness. But then what mattered it? She was going to one end of the world, and I to another; and I wished only that she should know—that she should believe.
“Listen, Mademoiselle. I know that I am fit only to serve and obey you. You are noble and I—whatever claim I have—am but a loutish fellow. Why I have the audacity to speak to you I do not know, save that by kindness you have given me that right. Listen you must. I love you, Mademoiselle, I love you! That is all.”
She had stood facing the door, her hands before her and her eyes cast down, quietly listening. But as I went on her hands dropped to her sides, her head lifted and her eyes, first mildly curious and then indignant, flashed at me angrily.
“Stop, monsieur!” she said, and so haughtily that the blood went back upon my heart. She was no small woman, but to me, unworthy of her, she seemed in her pride and majesty to add to her stature half again. She turned red and white by turns, while her lips seemed to be seeking the words with which to deter me. Yet I could not have stopped any more than I could have gone to find Coligny’s treasure. When she spoke again, it was with a coolness and precision, that chilled me to the heart.