She gave a sigh which I took as meaning that the more we should see each other, the harder the parting would be at last, but she said, tremulously: "We shall meet at supper, monsieur, and to-morrow, when you conduct me on to Maury." Then she entered the inn, but stopped on the threshold, and, casting on me a strangely wistful look, she added, "Great must be the friendship between you and La Tournoire, that you can so confidently assure his protection to those for whom you ask it." "Oh, I have done much for him, and he cannot refuse me any request that it is in his power to grant," I said, truly enough. "Then," she went on, "the tie is one of obligation, rather than of great friendship?" "Yes. I have often been in a position to do him great services when no one else was, and when he most needed them. As for my feeling of friendship for him, I shall not even weep when he is dead." "Suppose you should love a woman," she continued, with a strange eagerness, "and there should come a time when you would have to choose between your love for her, and your friendship for this man, which would prevail?" "I would sacrifice La Tournoire for the woman I loved," I answered, with truth. She looked at me steadily, and a hope seemed to dawn in her eyes, but in a moment they darkened again; she sighed deeply, and she turned to ascend to her chamber, while I stood there trying to deduce a meaning from her strange speeches and conduct, which I finally put down to the capaciousness of woman. I could understand the feeling that she ought to part from a man who loved her and whom her religion forbade her to love in return; but why she should seem pleased at the apparent lukewarmness of my friendship for La Tournoire, whom she was willing to accept as her guide, I could not guess. Since she intended to part from me, never to see me again, what mattered it to her whether or not I was the intimate of a proscribed ruffian? Yet she seemed glad to hear that I was not, but this might be only seeming. I might not have read her face and tone aright. Her inquiries might have been due to curiosity alone. So I thought no more of them, and gave my mind instead to planning how she might be made to ignore the difference between our religions, and to revoke the edict banishing me from her side. It would be necessary that she should be willing to remain at Maury, with a guard composed of some of my men, while I, giving a pretext for delaying the flight and for the absence of myself and the most of my company, should attempt the delivery of her father from the chateau of Fleurier. It was my hope, though I dared not yet breathe it, that I might bring her father and my company back to Maury, and that all of us might then proceed to Guienne.