‘I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle,’ I answered, striving to recover my composure.
‘Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert you,’ she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my heart. ‘We should have been base indeed, if we had not made some attempt to save you. I thank Heaven, M. de Berault, that it has so far succeeded that that strange man has promised me your life. You have seen him?’ she continued eagerly and in another tone, while her eyes grew on a sudden large with fear.
‘Yes, Mademoiselle,’ I said. ‘I have seen him, and it is true, He has given me my life.’
‘And—?’
‘And sent me into imprisonment.’
‘For how long?’ she whispered.
‘I do not know,’ I answered. ‘I fear during the King’s pleasure.’
She shuddered.
‘I may have done more harm than good,’ she murmured, looking at me piteously. ‘But I did it for the best. I told him all, and perhaps I did harm.’
But to hear her accuse herself thus, when she had made this long and lonely journey to save me, when she had forced herself into her enemy’s presence, and had, as I was sure she had, abased herself for me, was more than I could bear.