I needed no second admonition. I hustled on my clothes; Mlle. de Bergerac left the room and immediately returned, clad in a light mantle. We made our way undiscovered to one of the private entrances of the château, hurried across the park and found a light in the window of Coquelin's lodge. It was about half past nine. Mlle. de Bergerac gave a loud knock at the door, and we entered her lover's apartment. Coquelin was seated at his table writing. He sprang to his feet with a cry of amazement. Mlle. de Bergerac stood panting, with one hand pressed to her heart, while rapidly moving the other as if to enjoin calmness. "They are come back," she began,--"M. de Treuil and my brother!" "I thought he was to come to-morrow. Was it a deception?" "Ah, no! not from him,--an accident Pierre Coquelin, I've had such a scene! But it's not your fault." "What made the scene?" "My refusal, of course." "You turned off the Vicomte?" "Holy Virgin! You ask me?" "Unhappy girl!" cried Coquelin. "No, I was a happy girl to have had a chance to act as my heart bade me. I had faltered enough. But it was hard!" "It's all hard." "The hardest is to come," said my aunt She put out her hand; he sprang to her and seized it, and she pressed his own with vehemence. "They have discovered our secret,--don't ask how. It was Heaven's will. From this moment, of course--" "From this moment, of course," cried Coquelin, "I stay where I am!" With an impetuous movement she raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. "You stay where you are. We have nothing to conceal, but we have nothing to avow. We have no confessions to make. Before God we have done our duty. You may expect them, I fancy, to-night; perhaps, too, they will honor me with a visit. They are supping between two battles. They will attack us with fury, I know; but let them dash themselves against our silence as against a wall of stone. I have taken my stand. My love, my errors, my longings, are my own affair. My reputation is a sealed book. Woe to him who would force it open!" The poor girl had said once, you know, that she was afraid of her nature. Assuredly it had now sprung erect in its strength; it came hurrying into action on the winds of her indignation. "Remember, Coquelin," she went on, "you are still and always my friend. You are the guardian of my weakness, the support of my strength." "Say it all, Gabrielle!" he cried. "I'm for ever and ever your lover!" Suddenly, above the music of his voice, there came a great rattling knock at the door. Coquelin sprang forward; it opened in his face and disclosed my father and M. de Treuil. I have no words in my dictionary, no images in my rhetoric, to represent the sudden horror that leaped into my father's face as his eye fell upon his sister. He staggered back a step and then stood glaring, until his feelings found utterance in a single word: "_Coureuse!_" I have never been able to look upon the word as trivial since that moment.