"Oh," she panted, "are they gone? did you kill them? how good you are! Oh, God will reward you for being so good to us!" And she trembled so she would certainly have fallen if I had not held her close.
"You are safe now, dear," said I, soothing her, quite forgetting that she knew me not as I knew her, and that, if she gave the matter any heed at all, my speech must have puzzled her sorely. "But come with me!" And I led her to where Marc lay in the shade.
The dear lad's face had gone even whiter than when I left him, and I saw that he had swooned.
"The pain and shock have overcome him!" I exclaimed, dropping on my knees to remove the pillow of ferns from under his head. As I did so, I heard the girl catch her breath sharply, with a sort of moan, and glancing up, I saw her face all drawn with misery. While I looked in some surprise, she suddenly threw herself down, and crushed his face in her bosom, quite shutting off the air, which he, being in a faint, greatly needed. I was about to protest, when her words stopped me.
"Marc, Marc," she moaned, "why did you betray us? Oh, why did you betray us so cruelly? But oh, I love you even if you were a traitor. Now you are dead" (she had not heard me, evidently, saying he had swooned), "now you are dead I may love you, no matter what you did. Oh, my love, why did you, why did you?" And while I listened in bewilderment, she sprang to her feet, and her blue eyes blazed upon me fiercely.
"You killed him!" she hissed at me across his body.
This I remembered afterwards. At the moment I only knew that she was calling the lad a traitor. That I was well tired of.
"Madame!" said I, sternly. "Do not presume so far as to touch him again."
It was her turn to look astonished now. Her eyes faltered from my angry face to Marc's, and back again in a kind of helplessness.
"Oh, you do well to accuse him," I went on, bitterly,—perhaps not very relevantly. "You shall not dishonour him by touching him, you, who can believe vile lies of the loyal gentleman who loves you, and has, it may be, given his life for the girl who now insults him."