n his letter, know you, monsieur?" she inquired.

"I heard them say that he did not," Garnache replied. "But it may well
be that he had good reason. He may suspect more than he has written."

"In that case," she asked--and there was a wounded note in her
voice--"Why should a touch of fever keep him at La Rochette? Would a
touch of fever keep you from the woman you loved, monsieur, if you knew,
or even suspected, that she was in durance?"

"I do not know, mademoiselle. I am an old man who has never loved, and
so it would be unfair of me to pass judgment upon lovers. That they
think not as other folk is notorious; their minds are for the time
disordered."

Nevertheless he looked at her where she sat by the window, so gentle, so
lissome, so sweet, and so frail, and he had a shrewd notion that were he
Florimond de Condillac, whether he feared her in durance or not, not the
fever, nor the plague itself should keep him for the best part of a week
at La Rochette within easy ride of her.

She smiled gently at his words, and turned the conversation to the
matter that imported most.

"Tonight then, it is determined that we are to go?"

"At midnight or a little after. Be in readiness, mademoiselle, and
do not keep me waiting when I rap upon your door. Haste may be of
importance."

"You may count upon me, my friend," she answered him, and stirred by a
sudden impulse she held out her hand. "You have been very good to me,
Monsieur de Garnache. You have made life very different for me since
your coming. I had it in my mind to blame you once for your rashness in
returning alone. I was a little fool. You can never know the peace that
has come to me from having you at hand. The fears, the terrors that
possessed me before you came have all been dispelled in this last week
that you have been my sentry in two senses."

He took the hand she held out to him, and looked down at her out of his
grimy, disfigured face, an odd tenderness stirring him. He felt as might
have felt a father towards his daughter--at least, so thought he then.

"Child," he answered her, "you overrate it. I have done no less than I
could do, no more than any other would have done."

"Yet more than Florimond has done--and he my betrothed. A touch of fever
was excuse enough to keep him at La Rochette, whilst the peril of death
did not suffice to deter you from coming hither."

"You forget, mademoiselle, that, maybe, he does not know your
circumstances."

"M