"I am sorry, mademoiselle," I said, in a tone purposely cool and cutting (though it was my own heart I stabbed with my coldness), "that you compel me to treat you comme enfant. I shall wait one minute, and if you do not rise from the ground in that time I shall call your friends." Then I drew myself up tall and stiff, like a sentinel, turned my back on mademoiselle, and took out my watch to note the time by the moon-beams.
There was no answer, but the sobs grew less until there was only an occasional convulsive catching of the breath. Then came a moment of quiet. There were neither sobs nor moans. Then a small and plaintive voice said gently:
"Monsieur, I will be good now."
I turned quickly. Mademoiselle was starting to rise from the low bank; I grasped her hands and helped her to her feet and looked down upon her. Her face was flushed with weeping; her hood had fallen back and her dark curls were in wild disorder; she might have been a beautiful child who had been naughty but was now subdued. She adjusted her hood and her curls as best she could, and then walked quietly along beside me. We neither of us spoke, and we walked rapidly and in a few minutes overtook the others and came up to the house together, and into the big living-room, where fresh logs piled in the great chimney-place were blazing and crackling, and lighting every cranny of the long room.
Mademoiselle was paler than usual, but otherwise there were no signs of the tempest she had just been through, and I looked at her with wonder. Madame Saugrain, noticing her pallor, and thinking she was cold, put her down on the wooden settle in the chimney-place to warm by the glowing fire, and bustled about helping Narcisse to bring in plates of croquecignolles and cups of hot mulled gooseberry wine, which was much to my satisfaction, for the frosty air and the lateness of the hour had put a keen edge on an appetite that was ever ready for trencher service.
Now the settle on which mademoiselle sat had a high back and was turned away from the rest of us, so that, as we engaged in helping Madame Saugrain, we might easily have forgotten the little figure hidden away upon it. Perhaps the others did, but I did not. My mind hovered around it all the time; but I was divided between a desire to take her some cake and wine, which I was sure would do her good, and a fear of my reception if I did, and a baser fear that I might thereby lose my own toothsome cake and fragrant wine, which was at that moment making most potent appeals to my inner man by way of the nostrils. "For," I said to myself, "I know the ways of maidens. They like not to see men eat. It seems in their minds a greater compliment to them if a man do but nibble and sip and seem to be careless of his victuals and drink, which I maintain is a great mistake, for a good trencherman is ever a good lover, and a man to be trusted in all the serious business of life."
To ease my conscience and my appetite at the same time, I disposed of a croquecignolle and my steaming cup of wine with such haste that the one stuck in my windpipe and liked to choke me, and the other burnt my mouth well and might as well have been boiling water for all the pleasure my palate got out of it. Then I pretended to suddenly remember mademoiselle, and carried her a plate of cake and a cup of wine with fear and trembling.
She refused them, as I thought she would, but looked up at me very sweetly and asked me very gently to sit down beside her for a moment, and I remember thinking as I did so that I had been wise to secure my cake and wine first, else would I have gone hungry, since I could scarce have the face to eat if mademoiselle would not eat with me. But I still thought it would do her good to have at least a little of the wine, and, remembering how well she had yielded to discipline when she found she must, I set the wine on the hearth where it would keep warm for further use, and then turned to hear what she had to say.
"I only want to say to you, Monsieur, that I am very much ashamed of myself this evening, but I am very unhappy, and I have brooded upon my unhappiness until I have become nervous and irritable, and, as you saw to-night, incapable of self-control. Is that a sufficient excuse for behaving like a spoiled child?"
"Mademoiselle," I said, "it is far more than sufficient, but I am more distressed than I can tell you that you should be so unhappy. If you would but tell me the cause perhaps I could help you. Is it anything you can tell me?"