“He is asleep in a room near. I will waken him. You are not afraid to stay here a few moments, while I am gone?”
“Oh, no.”
“He may wish to question you himself.”
“Tell him,” said Afra, speaking rapidly, “that the mulattoes are jealous of him, because they think he wants to have all the power in his own hands. They say—‘There go the ships! There are no whites in power now. So much the better! But here is Raymond displaced, and L’Ouverture is all in all. We shall have every office filled with blacks; and the only chance for our degraded colour is in the fields or in the removal of this black.’ Tell him this: but oh! be sure you tell him my father and I do not agree in one word of it.”
“She would do anything in the world to save him,” said Euphrosyne.
“You are dear as a daughter to him,” said Monsieur Pascal, with eyes of love, as he left them.
“I wish I was sure of that,” said Afra. “But what can be done, Euphrosyne? He has no guard! And my father is not here, nor any one to help us! I fancy every moment I hear them coming.”
“I am not much afraid,” said Euphrosyne, her teeth chattering all the while. “He is so powerful! He never seems to want anybody to protect—scarcely to help him.”
“But asleep! After midnight! Think of it! If they should seize him and bind him before he is awake!”
This fear was removed by his appearance, dressed, and like himself. He smiled at the girls, offered them each an arm, and said he had a sight to show them, if they would look at it without speaking. He led them in the dark to a window, whence they looked down upon a courtyard, which was full of soldiers, awake and armed. In another moment, Toussaint was conducting them along the corridors, towards their own apartments, “You knew!” whispered Afra. “We need not have come. I believe you always know everything.”