And since Mademoiselle is here, I must see her.

It was by chance that I heard, on the road, that there is fever at Saintes, and that she had returned home.

I was on my way to Saintes to see her and give her my news of her father." "But what news ?" asked Marie, and the answer was lost as the speakers passed into the doorway, the new-comer evidently leading the way, the peasant and his wife following without protest, and with that instinctive obedience to unconscious command which will survive all the iconoclasm of a hundred revolutions.
There followed a tramping on the stairs and a half-suppressed laugh as the new-comer stumbled upward.

Marie opened the door slowly.
"It is a gentleman," she announced, "who does not give his name." Juliette de Gemosac was standing at the far side of the table, with the lamp throwing its full light upon her.

She was dressed in white, with a blue ribbon at her waist and wrists.