keep her word to us if she likes."

"But," cried Martial, suddenly rising, "I don't know what we have been
thinking of all this time!"

"Thinking about--what do you mean, Martial?"

"Why, the poor girl you saved from drowning is down-stairs--perhaps
dying; and, instead of rendering her any assistance, we are attending to
our own affairs up-stairs."

"Make yourself perfectly easy; Francois and Amandine are there watching
her, and they would have come to call us had there been any danger or
necessity. Still you are right; let us go to her. You must see her to
whom we shall, perhaps, owe all our future happiness."

And Martial, supported by La Louve, descended to the lower part of the
house. Before they have reached the kitchen, let us in a few words
describe what had occurred there from the time when Fleur-de-Marie had
been confided to the charge of the two children.

CHAPTER XVII.

DOCTOR GRIFFON.

Francois and Amandine had contrived to convey Fleur-de-Marie near the
fire, when M. de Saint-Remy and Doctor Griffon, who had crossed the
river in Nicholas's boat, entered the house. Whilst the children were
making the fire burn up, Doctor Griffon bestowed on the young girl his
utmost care.

"The poor girl cannot be more than seventeen at most!" exclaimed the
count, who was looking on. "What do you think of her, doctor?"

"Her pulse is scarcely perceptible; but, strange to say, the skin of the
face is not livid in the subject, as is usually the case in asphyxia
from submersion," replied the doctor, with professional calmness, and
contemplating Fleur-de-Marie with a deeply meditative air.

Doctor Griffon was a tall, thin man, pallid and completely bald, except
two tufts of thin black hair, carefully brushed back on the poll, and
flattened on the temples. His countenance, wrinkled and furrowed by the
fatigues of study, was calm, intelligent, and reflective. Profoundly
learned, of great experience, and a skilful practitioner, first surgeon
at a civil hospital, where we shall again encounter him, Doctor Griffon
had but one defect, that of completely abstracting himself from the
patient, and only considering the disease. Young or old, rich or poor,
was no matter,--he only thought of medical fact, more or less
remarkable, which the subject presented. For him there was nothing but
subjects.

"What a lovely face! How beautiful she is in spite of this frightful
paleness!" said M. de Saint-Remy. "Did you ever see