"But you are not going?" said Eloise, one white hand seizing my coat-sleeve, and a tremble of surprise in her voice.
"But I must," replied I. "I must get back to Paris. I will come to-morrow morning. Madame Ancelot here will look after you. There are books. You will be happy, and I will come back in the morning, and we will have a long day in the forest. We will take our luncheon in a basket, and have a picnic."
"Ah, well!" sighed Eloise, looking timidly from me to Madame Ancelot, who, having placed the lamp on the table, stood, with all a peasant's horror of fresh air in the house, waiting to shut the windows, "if you must go—— But you will come back?"
"To-morrow; and you will look after her, Madame Ancelot, will you not?"
"Mais oui," said the good woman with a smile and as if she were talking to two children. "Mademoiselle need not be afraid; there are no robbers here; nothing more dangerous than the rabbits and the birds; and if there were, why, Ancelot has his gun."
Eloise tripped over to the woman and gave her a kiss; then, glancing back at me, she laughed and ran out into the tiny hall to get her hat.
"I will go with you as far as—a little way," she said, as she tied the strings of her hat, craning up on her toe-tips to see herself in a high mirror on the wall.
On the drawbridge she hung for a moment, peeping over at the still water of the moat, in which the stars were beginning to cast reflections.
"How dark, and still, and secret it looks!" murmured she. "Toto, has it ever drowned anyone?"