A deep red flush mounted to his forehead, but he bowed so profoundly that the curls of his periwig fell before his face. “It is your devoted lover, mademoiselle,” he replied, and walked backward to the door, holding his plumed hat against his heart and stepping with the ease and precision of a dancing master. On the threshold he made her another profound obeisance and, smiling, closed the door behind him. He paused only a moment in the hall below to give a few sharp instructions to the sergeant left in command. “If any man attempts to enter this house to-night,” he said in a hard tone, “shoot him. If you let him evade you, I will hang you.” The soldier saluted, and M. de Baudri walked calmly down the garden path, and leaping into the saddle, set off at a gallop for Nîmes. CHAPTER XVIII ROSALINE’S HUMBLE FRIENDS Meanwhile a very different scene had been enacted in the kitchen, where Babet had confronted the cobbler and poured upon his devoted head a volley of questions. She had gone out with Rosaline early, before there was even a hint of approaching catastrophe, and she could not understand the swift march of events, and her suspicious soul was possessed with a rooted distrust of the poor hunchback, who had not yet rallied from Rosaline’s accusations, striking home as they did after the guilty hours of his temptation. The two had shut themselves in the kitchen with the dog, and le Bossu sat by the fire, an expression of dull despair upon his face, while Babet stood over him, her arms akimbo and her keen black eyes riveted upon him. Like Rosaline, she questioned his motive for coming to the house at all. “What brought you here this morning, Petit Bossu?” she demanded harshly; “we needed no new shoes.” The cobbler’s face darkened. “_Nom de St. Denis!_” he exclaimed; “have you nothing better to do than to suspect your friends at such a time?” “Yet you came--and why?” persisted Babet. The hunchback threw out his hands with a gesture of impatience. “There is no reason why I should explain to you,” he retorted contemptuously. “Ah!” ejaculated Babet, in a tone of dark suspicion, “what do you expect me to think of such obstinate silence? You must be a wicked man--I have always heard that hunchbacks were malicious; how could you give mademoiselle up? Why did you not let her escape through the woods, beast?” The cobbler was tried beyond endurance. “Mother of Heaven!” he cried bitterly, “do you think that I would injure a hair of mademoiselle’s head? She could not escape; M. de Baudri had two circles of sentries about the place, and I knew it. There were men below the cataract--in the woods--to attempt to pass them would have been to risk her life. You were in the snare; I tried to keep her away from the house, but I could not, and they would have found her anywhere in the end.” Babet threw back her head with a snort; she had the air of an old war-horse scenting the battle from afar.