“Let me have your boat, and I go alone,” said I curtly. But I was sure of him nevertheless.
“I’m with you, sure, Master Paul, if you will go,” he rejoined. “And maybe it’s worth while to disturb his reverence’s plans, if it be only an Englishman that we’re taking so much trouble about.”
“We must and shall save him, Nicole,” I said, as deliberately as my panting breath would permit, “or I will die in the trying. He is betrothed to Mademoiselle de Lamourie, you know.”
“I should say, rather, let him die for her, that a better man may live for her,” he retorted shrewdly. “But as you will, Master Paul, of course!”
In the privacy of my own heart I thought extremely well of Nicole’s discrimination; but I said nothing, for by this we were come to the wharf; and I saw—Yvonne!
Chapter XVI
The Way of a Maid
Almost to her side I came before she was aware of me, so intent she was upon her purpose. Two men of the village, fishermen whom I knew, she had summoned to her, and was passionately urging them to take her to Kenneticook. But for all her beauty, her enthralling charm, they hung back doggedly—being but dull clods, and in a shaking terror at the very name of the Black Abbé. It passed my comprehension that they should have any power at all when those wonderful eyes burned upon them. Never had I seen her so beautiful as then, her face wild with entreaty, her bewildering hair half fallen about her shoulders. A white, soft-falling shawl, such as I had never before seen her wear, was flung about her, and one little hand with its live, restless fingers clutched the fabric closely to her throat, as if she had been disturbed at her toilet.
I was about to interrupt her, for there was no moment to lose if I would accomplish my purpose; but of a sudden she seemed to realize the hopelessness of her effort to move these stolid fishermen. Flinging out her arms with a gesture of bitterness and despair, she cried, pointing to Nicole’s boat:
“Push off the boat, you cowards, and I will go alone!”
And turning upon the word she found herself face to face with me.