'My sister,' I said, 'sweet and beautiful as you are, how is it that you never married?'
With lifted finger, as one speaks to a too daring child, she said only 'Ssshh!' Then, with the movement of the emigrant readjusting his knapsack, she added, 'Allons! half-past ten! Dr. Nadaud will be here before we are ready for him!'
From that day Sister Gabrielle avoided sitting by my bedside. She watched over me just as tenderly as before, but our talks were shorter, and I never ventured to repeat my question, as you may imagine. Nevertheless, lying there through the long days, it was impossible not to go on wondering what had sent this beautiful woman into the rough groove where I found her.
One day I discovered that Dr. Nadaud came from the same town as herself, and I fell at once to questioning him about her. All that I could elicit from him was that her name in the world had been Jeanne D'Alcourt, and that she came of a good old Norman titled family. I did not learn much by that. It was not necessary to hear that she was noble, for she had the stamp of nobility in every line and in every pose of her body. For a talkative fellow, I thought Nadaud had remarkably little to say about his former townswoman, and, after gently sounding him once or twice on the subject, I came to the conclusion that it was useless to look to him for enlightenment, but I also came to the conclusion that Sister Gabrielle had a history.
August came. I had been three months in St. Malo Hospital, and now the time for leaving it had arrived.
It was early morning. A fiacre stood at the gate with my luggage upon it, and Sister Gabrielle had come to the doorway which led into the courtyard to see me off.
Early as it was, the sun was already well on his day's journey, and perhaps it was the strong glare from the white wall that made her shade her eyes so persistently with her left hand while we were saying 'Good-bye.' As for my own eyes, there was something the matter with them, too, for the landscape, or so much of it as I could see from the St. Malo Hospital doorway, had taken on a strange, blurred look since I saw it from the window ten minutes before.
'Adieu, mon lieutenant, adieu!' cried Sister Gabrielle, in a voice meant to be very cheery.
'Adieu, ma sœur! May I come to see you and the old place if ever I find myself in these latitudes again?'
'Yes, yes, that is it; come back and see who is in your little bed under the window. Take care of the arm!' touching the sling that held it. 'Dr. Nadaud will expect a letter from you in copper-plate style before another month is over. Allons! We will say au revoir, then, not adieu. Bon voyage, mon lieutenant, bon voyage!'