She looked aside abruptly before replying, and when she turned to face me again her eyes were brimming, though her mouth was hard set.
"You think us ungrateful, Monsieur, you think us callous, you think us cold; but you think wrong in all three. But there is, I pray God, a life to be saved, if to save it is possible, and there is much to be thought of, much to be planned. You will excuse me for to-night? To me the danger is greater than you admit—I cannot bear to speak of it. I am more truly a woman than you credit, and—and—God keep you, Monsieur, now and always!"
Before I could reply she had gone, still half mumbling the words between her shut teeth, leaving me touched to the heart with self-reproach. Not that I believed the danger to the boy was serious. Now that his scheme was laid bare, Louis would resort to no impolitic violence; but love, given unreservedly as Mademoiselle's love was given to little Gaston, is never calmly rational, but, over-anxious, measures danger by its own depth.
The next morning Brother Paulus and I broke our fast alone, nor did I see Mademoiselle until the horses stood by the mounting-blocks. That she had rested badly, sleeping little or none at all, was plain from the black hollows which underlay her eyes. Even Gaston saw the change.
"Suzanne is ugly to-day, Monsieur Gaspard," said he, running forward to feed Roland with a morsel of bread. "I think she has been crying. That is silly, Suzanne, for if people go away they always come back."
"Let him think so," said she, trying to smile as she shook a finger at him. "To me it seems a sin to make a child sorrowful. Come and say good-bye to Monsieur Gaspard, Gaston."
It was strange, almost grotesque, certainly pathetic, how the child in him froze to the dignity of the Count of Foix.
"Goodbye, Monsieur," said he, coming forward sedately, but with a back-turned glance of regret at Roland whinnying after him. "My father, the Count de Narbonne, will be sorry—oh, you have a new kind of spurs on, Monsieur Gaspard! Suzanne! do you see? Is that because you have so far to ride."
"Goodbye, Monsieur Gaston," said I, smiling in spite of my heavy heart at his struggle to be two such incongruities at the one minute as a dignified prince and a wholesome-natured child of six. "When next we ride together we must have just such another famous gallop as we had on Saturday."
"Shall we? Shall we?" he cried, gleefully clapping his hands, the prince all flung to the wind. "Oh, but it was grand, that ride from La Voulle! Suzanne, you would have thought the King of France was after us, we rode so fast."