‘It is,’ I continued slowly, ‘that you will permit me to remain at Cocheforet for a few days while the soldiers are here. I am told that there are twenty men and two officers quartered in your house. Your brother is away. I ask to be permitted, Mademoiselle, to take his place for the time, and to be privileged to protect your sister and yourself from insult. That is all.’
She raised her hand to her head. After a long pause,—
‘The frogs!’ she muttered, ‘they croak! I can not hear.’
Then, to my surprise, she turned quickly and suddenly on her heel, and walked over the bridge, leaving me standing there. For a moment I stood aghast, peering after her shadowy figure, and wondering what had taken her. Then, in a minute or less, she came quickly back to me, and I understood. She was crying.
‘M. de Barthe,’ she said, in a trembling voice, which told me that the victory was won, ‘is there nothing else? Have you no other penance for me?’
‘None, Mademoiselle.’
She had drawn the shawl over her head, and I no longer saw her face.
‘That is all you ask?’ she murmured.
‘That is all I ask—now,’ I answered.
‘It is granted,’ she said slowly and firmly. ‘Forgive me if I seem to speak lightly—if I seem to make little of your generosity or my shame; but I can say no more now. I am so deep in trouble and so gnawed by terror that—I cannot feel anything keenly to-night, either shame or gratitude. I am in a dream; God grant that it may pass as a dream! We are sunk in trouble. But for you and what you have done, M. de Barthe—I—’ she paused and I heard her fighting with the sobs which choked her—‘forgive me... I am overwrought. And my—my feet are cold,’ she added, suddenly and irrelevantly. ‘Will you take me home?’