CHAPTER X
OVER THE FRONTIER
In the carriage Agatha related to her mistress what had occurred after her disappearance from La Haye. How she had sent Père Louchet with the message to Gaillard at Paris, and then had followed on to Tours and discovered where her mistress was imprisoned. Tournay and Gaillard, coming post haste to Tours, had reached there on the same day that saw the transfer of Mademoiselle de Rochefort to the prison-ship upon the Loire. Together with Agatha, they had formulated a plan of rescue and put it into immediate execution.
The two men had approached the vessel in a small skiff on the river, while Agatha had awaited them in a carriage on the other side. The moving of the prison ship down the river might have disconcerted their plans had not the watchful Agatha seen the movement, and following along the shore reached them when they had almost succumbed from the exposure and cold.
The carriage was a commodious one and well equipped for the long journey, and in a few minutes Agatha had her mistress in a change of warm clothing. As soon as Edmé was able, she bade Agatha call Tournay to the carriage door.
"Thanks are a small return for what you have done," she said as he rode by her side, "yet they are all I have to give." Then she stretched her hand out to him with an impulsive gesture,—"Robert Tournay, I misjudged you when you were last at La Thierry. Will you forgive it?"
It was the first time she had spoken to him as one addresses an equal, and it moved him greatly. He leaned forward and took the hand she gave him, looking down at her with a smile that lit up his face, as he said:—
"Mademoiselle, I forgave the words you spoke as soon as they were uttered. It is happiness enough to know that I have saved you." Before he released it, he thought he felt the hand in his tremble a little.
The remembrance flashed through her mind, how, years before, she had once noticed Tournay's manly bearing as he rode into the château-court upon a spirited horse. She had at that time thought him handsome, with an air about him superior to his station, and then had dismissed him from her thoughts. As he rode before her now, the water still dripping from his clothing, hatless, with damp locks clinging to his forehead, she thought she had never looked upon a nobler figure among all the gentlemen who in the old days frequented the château of the baron, her father.
"Where are we going?" she asked, with more emotion than such a simple question warranted.