‘Ho! ho!’ I replied softly, looking hard first at my old prisoner, and then at my new one. ‘Then—what do you wish me to do?’
‘Leave him here!’ M. de Cocheforet answered, his face flushed, the pulse in his cheek beating.
I had known him for a man of perfect honour before, and trusted him. But this evident earnest anxiety on behalf of his friend touched me not a little. Besides, I knew that I was treading on slippery ground: that it behoved me to be careful.
‘I will do it,’ I said after a moment’s reflection. ‘He will play me no tricks, I suppose? A letter of—’
‘MON DIEU, no! He will understand,’ Cocheforet answered eagerly. ‘You will not repent it. Let us be going.’
‘Well, but my horse?’ I said, somewhat taken aback by this extreme haste. ‘How am I to—’
‘We shall overtake it,’ he assured me. ‘It will have kept the road. Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can give orders there to have these two fetched and buried.’
I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so, after another word or two, it was arranged. We picked up what we had dropped, M. de Cocheforet helped his sister to mount, and within five minutes we were gone. Casting a glance back from the skirts of the wood I fancied that I saw the masked man straighten himself and turn to look after us, but the leaves were beginning to intervene, the distance may have cheated me. And yet I was not indisposed to think the unknown a trifle more observant, and a little less seriously hurt, than he seemed.