"I do not know them," Laure faltered.
"You love your husband?"
"Ah!" the other gasped.
"You love him, I say. My God! do I not know what love is!" and she smote her breast as she spoke. "You love him. You have told me all. You loved him; you came to love him on the day you married him, the day he saved you from that--that animal!"
"He is dead!" Laure wailed. "He is dead!"
"I doubt it. Men do not die easily." Possibly, here, too, she was speaking from experience. "I doubt it. More like, those animals, Desparre and your uncle, caused him to be arrested and thrown into prison; remember, they may have encountered him on their road to you. He may be--who knows?--in the chain that is now on its road to Brest or Dunkirk."
Laure wrung her hands and shook her head at this, while Marion continued:--
"Or suppose Desparre lied to you; suppose they had not encountered him at all. Suppose, I say, he came back to you that night, the next morning, and found you gone; with none to tell where--you say yourself that no servant appeared on the scene ere the exempts dragged you away. Suppose he came back. What then?"
"I do not know; I cannot think."
"I can. He will find out what has become of you, follow you. Mon Dieu!" as a sudden thought flashed into her mind. "Did he not tell you he meant himself to emigrate to Louisiana, the very place to which we go. Courage; courage; courage."