The Gars was dressed as a Chouan, with a musket slung from his shoulder over his goatskin, and would have been quite disguised were it not for the grace of his movements. Marie withdrew hastily into the cottage, obeying one of those instinctive promptings which are as little explicable as fear itself. The young man was soon beside her before the chimney, where a bright fire was burning. Both were voiceless, fearing to look at each other, or even to make a movement. One and the same hope united them, the same doubt; it was agony, it was joy.
“Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil at last, in a trembling voice, “your safety alone has brought me here.”
“My safety!” he said, bitterly.
“Yes,” she answered; “so long as I stay at Fougeres your life is threatened, and I love you too well not to leave it. I go to-night.”
“Leave me! ah, dear love, I shall follow you.”
“Follow me!—the Blues?”
“Dear Marie, what have the Blues got to do with our love?”
“But it seems impossible that you can stay with me in France, and still more impossible that you should leave it with me.”
“Is there anything impossible to those who love?”
“Ah, true! true! all is possible—have I not the courage to resign you, for your sake.”