Yvonne dropped her lids for a second, and shook her head rebukingly.
“That is not English, monsieur,” she protested, “but it is very nice of you. I should not know what to do with a ship just now; but I like our little pleasant French fictions.”
Captain Eliphalet, however, could be French for a moment only.
“But you, mademoiselle, you—how comes such a one as you to be sailing away into exile?”
Yvonne’s long lashes drooped again, and this time did not rise so quickly.
“I have reason to think, monsieur,” she answered gravely, “that dear friends and kinsfolk of mine are on this ship, themselves going, fettered, into exile. I could not stay behind and let them go so. But enough of myself, monsieur, for the present,” she went on, speaking more rapidly. “I want to ease the anxieties of these poor souls who have come with me. Is there among your prisoners a young man known as ‘Petit Joliet’? Here is his mother come to look for him.”
Captain Eliphalet summoned a soldier who stood near, and put the question to him in English.
“There is one by the name of Franse Joliet on the roll, captain,” answered the red-coat, saluting.
“That’s he! That’s my boy!” cried his mother, catching the name. She had been waiting close by with a strained, fixed face, which now went to pieces in a medley of smiles and tears, like a reflection on still water suddenly broken. She clutched Yvonne’s hands, blessed and kissed them, and then rushed off vaguely as if to find Petit Joliet in durance behind some pile of ropes or water-butt.
“And Lenoir—Tamin Lenoir,” continued Yvonne, her voice thrilling with joy over her task, “and Michel Savarin. Are they, too, in the hold?”