The stranger looked around her with calm self-possession, and seemed surprised at the loneliness of the landscape and the deserted look of things around the little waiting-room and freight-house at the end of the wharf. Colonel Corbin, imagining her the unexpectedly arrived guest of some one in the county, advanced with a profound bow, and taking off his hat in the cutting blast, said:
“Madam, permit me to say that you seem to be a stranger and to have no one to meet you. I am Colonel Corbin, and I should esteem it a privilege to be of assistance to you.”
“Thank you,” she answered, turning to him and speaking with a very French accent, “I did not expect any one to meet me, but I thought there would be a town—or a village at least, when I left the steamer. I am foreign to this country—I am French, but I am accustomed to traveling.”
“Every word that you say, madam, is another claim upon me. A lady, and alone in a strange country! Pray command my services. May I ask if you are a visitor to any of the county families?—for in that event everything would be very much simplified.”
“Scarcely,” responded the stranger, with the ghost of a smile upon her handsome face; “but I have traveled many thousand miles to have an interview with Mr. Richard Romaine. Permit me to introduce myself—I am Madame de Fonblanque.”
The Colonel’s face was a study as Madame de Fonblanque continued, calmly: “I should like first to go to a hotel—somewhere—and then I could arrange to meet Mr. Romaine.”
“But, madam, there is no hotel, except a country tavern at the Court House, ten miles away. My residence, however, Corbin Hall, is only four miles from here—and Mr. Romaine’s place, Shrewsbury, is also within that distance; and if you would accept of my hospitality, and that of my sister and my granddaughter, I should be most happy. I have here a chaise and pair, and would feel honored if you would accept of their service as well as mine.”
Madame de Fonblanque then showed considerable knowledge of human nature: for she at once agreed to trust the Colonel, although she had never laid eyes on him before.
“I think,” she said, after a slight pause, “that I shall be compelled to accept of your kindness as frankly as you offer it. I will say at once, that as I have come to demand an act of justice from Mr. Romaine, he may not make any effort toward seeing me—and as he may do me that act of justice, I must ask you to trust me for that. But the sooner I see him the better. If, therefore, you would drive me at once to his château—house—I could in a few moments discern his intentions. The boat, I understand, passes here daily before the sun rises—and I could leave to-morrow morning.”
The simplicity and directness of Madame de Fonblanque’s language prepossessed the Colonel still more in her favor. But at the proposition to go to Shrewsbury he winced a little. However, there was no help for it—he had offered to befriend her, and he stood unflinchingly to his word.