"Yes, Sir," she simply answered.
"And you have done well, Madame," answered the painter, with animation. "I am, perhaps, the only man incapable of betraying you in the whole town."
"Thank you for my mother and myself, Sir," gently said the young girl, who, up to that moment, had kept silence.
The painter was half dazed; the sweet and plaintive accents of that harmonious voice had made his heart beat rapidly.
"Unhappily, I am very weak myself to protect you, ladies," he resumed; "I am alone, a foreigner, suspected—more than suspected even, since I am threatened with being shortly placed on my trial."
"Oh!" said they, joining their hands in their grief, "We are lost then."
"Mon dieu!" cried the abbess, "We have placed all our hope in you."
"Wait," pursued he; "all is perhaps not so desperate as we suppose. As for me, I am preparing a plan of escape; I can only offer you one thing."
"What?" cried they, eagerly.
"To share my flight."