This I pushed open, and found myself in a somewhat spacious room with some remains of mouldering furniture and hangings. Here had been placed a small bed, a chair, and some food, and on the hearth were the means of lighting a little fire.
"Now we are in safety, monsieur, and can speak a little," said I, with an odd feeling of protection and patronage mingled with the veneration with which I regarded my companion. "Please sit down and rest while I light a fire. We can have one at any time, for this chimney communicates with my father's workshop, where he keeps a fire at all hours."
I busied myself with lighting the fire, and had started a cheerful blaze when I heard a deep sigh behind me, and looking round I was just in time to break the fall of the stranger as he sank on the floor. I was dreadfully frightened, but I did not lose my presence of mind. I loosened his doublet, moistened his forehead and lips with strong waters, and when he began to revive, and not before, I put a spoonful of wine into his mouth, remembering what Grace had said to me once:
"Never try to make an unconscious person swallow. You run the risk of choking him. When he begins to recover, he will swallow by instinct."
At last, when I had begun to think that I must call my mother at all hazards, the stranger opened his eyes and regarded me with fixed and solemn gaze.
"Is it thou, my Angelique?" he murmured. "Hast thou at last come to call thy father away?"
"Please take some more wine," said I, speaking as steadily as I could, but my voice and hand both trembled.
The stranger sighed again, and then seemed to come wholly to himself.
"I see I was bewildered," said he. "I took this demoiselle for my own daughter, who has been in heaven this many a year."
"I am the Demoiselle d'Antin," said I. "My father was obliged to go away, and Mrs. Grace is ill, so he sent me to guide you to a place of safety."