Denise shrugged her shoulders. She had plenty of spirit, and, at all events, that courage which refuses to admit the existence of danger. Perhaps she was not thinking of danger, or of herself, at all.
“Then the Count Lory de Vasselot has ordered us out of Corsica?” she asked.
“Mademoiselle, we are wasting time,” answered the priest, folding the letter and replacing it in his pocket. “A yacht is awaiting you off St. Florent. All is organized—”
“By the Count Lory de Vasselot?”
The abbé stamped his foot impatiently.
“Bon Dieu, mademoiselle!” he cried, “you will make me lose my temper. The yacht, I tell you, is at the entrance of the bay, and by to-morrow morning it will be halfway to France. You cannot stay here. You must make your choice between returning to France and going into the Watrin barracks at Bastia. Colonel Gilbert will, I fancy, know how to make you obey him. And all Corsica is in the hands of Colonel Gilbert—though no one but Colonel Gilbert knows that.”
He spoke rapidly, thrusting forward his dark, eager face, forgetting all his shyness, glaring defiance into her quiet eyes.
“There, mademoiselle—and now your answer?”
“Would it not be well if the Count Lory de Vasselot attended to his own affairs at the Château de Vasselot, and the interests he has there?” replied Denise, turning away from his persistent eyes.
And the abbé's face dropped as if she had shot him.