Before me, alone, just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale, the next crimson with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforet.

I cried out her name.
'M.

de Berault,' she said, trembling.

'You did not expect to see me ?' '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.