The doctor stood beside her, patting as he could her white arm or dark curls or tender cheek, and saying helplessly:
"Voilà, voilà! Quoi donc! N'importe, n'importe!" and many other as senseless words, and growing every moment more hopeless and helpless as mademoiselle but wept the more bitterly.
On the other side of the room stood young Papin, pale and rigid as if carved in stone, his eyes fixed on mademoiselle. I feared that for him too it had been a bitter blow, for I could not doubt that it was the announcement of mademoiselle's departure on the morrow that had created such consternation.
The captain had discreetly turned his back and was looking out of the window. At the sound of my entrance he turned and beckoned me to him.
"I fear 'twill never do," he whispered; "the maiden is breaking her heart."
As if she had heard his words, mademoiselle lifted her head, and though her face was tear-stained and her hair hanging in disheveled locks about it, it was still the most beautiful face I had ever seen.
At sight of me she flung her head back, and her eyes flashed. She extended one round white arm toward me, and in tones of bitter scorn she exclaimed:
"It is you, you, Monsieur, who have done this! I will not leave my guardians and my home and go away with you! You would not hear of my going with the chevalier, yet he was a French gentleman, and not merely a pretty boy!"
Madame and the doctor tried in vain to stop her tirade. She was in a fury; such blazing eyes, such crimson cheeks, and voice quivering with scorn. For a moment I was abashed and would have liked to slink out of sight. But when she was so ungenerous as to call me "a pretty boy," the fire returned to my heart, and I too drew myself up proudly.
"Mademoiselle, listen to me!" I said sternly. "I have but a few minutes ago spared the chevalier's life when I had him at my mercy, and shown him the way to escape from your friends here, who were running at the sound of his shot, and who, had they found him in Dr. Saugrain's grounds, would have made short work with him, I fear." (I could not but note out of the corner of my eye while I was speaking the quick start of young Papin at this announcement, the eager interest of my captain, and the doctor's look of dismay.)