"But are you certain?"
"Absolutely. He was seen on the walls just before the closing of the gates last night. You know at Valmy they do not wait for the sun to set. Shall I let you into a secret I would not have told you a fortnight ago?" The white night, its long hours haunted by anxious thoughts, had left a wan reflection on her face, but now the pallor warmed; into the tired eyes a little light of laughter flickered, part humorous, part tender, and the Cupid's bow trembled on its string. "In Amboise we are not so forlorn as you think. The innkeeper at Château-Renaud is our very good friend, or how could we have known that a certain Monsieur Stephen La Mothe, a wandering minstrel with lute and knapsack on his back, was coming our way?"
"You knew that?"
"From the first," she answered, still smiling, but with so kindly a raillery that not even a lover could take offence. "Did you think you played the part so well that you deceived us? Or that the Dauphin had sunk so low as to make a friend of the first hedge-singer who came his way? We were warned from Château-Renaud that you who arrived with Monsieur d'Argenton on horseback departed alone on foot."
"That raw-boned roan which passed me on the road?"
"Yes. And can you wonder if we were suspicious and just a little frightened? You were from Valmy and Valmy is our Galilee: nothing good comes out of it."
"I wonder at nothing but your goodness in bearing with me."
"You owe us nothing for that. That," the colour mounted to her forehead; she, too, had grown ashamed of the first night, ashamed and astonished that she had not understood Stephen La Mothe's transparent good faith from the very first, "that was precaution. In the Château we could watch the watcher. Then you began that fairy tale and your face told me you believed it every word. That puzzled me. How could anything good come out of Valmy? Yet next day you saved the Dauphin's life and again yesterday. But I am forgetting the King and how we know the letter was a lie. Cartier, the innkeeper at Château-Renaud, has a son in Valmy and had been to visit him: the King was on the walls when he left before sunset last night. The hangman's letter was a trap to catch us all, and the Great King consented to it. What a worthy King! Oh! I am very human and my bitterness must speak out when I remember last night. Saxe, Tristan, the King, Monsieur d'Argenton, and against them one weak coward of a girl. They would have lied my life away last night; and not mine only, the Dauphin's."
"Mademoiselle, am I forgiven for my folly of yesterday?" He knew he was, but for a cunning reason of his own he wished to hear her say so.
"Can I blame you?" she answered, making no pretence at misunderstanding him. "You, too, are from Valmy. No, no. I do not mean that. That was a cruel thing to say; it is you who must forgive me, for you are not of Valmy, you who stood by me and believed in me even when I seemed the vile thing they called me."