"Let her wait," he grumbled; "we waited long enough at Morsigny, and for no good. That is always the way, let a woman come, and poof! a man's love of a lifetime is forgotten. All right, Monsieur Gaspard, I'll go on, but you'll allow it's hard to be put aside for a stranger. As I was sitting in the court below, one of the house servants came to me saying there was a woman wanting the lady who travelled with us. Naturally I came first to tell you, the woman following all smothered in a hooded cloak, though the air outside is like a furnace. But as I turned to the left, the fool of a man cried out that Madame's room was to the right, and what could I do but take her there? Mademoiselle came at my knock, and I think she must have lain down in her clothes, for though she was fully dressed, her hair was all tumbled about her shoulders. But she had not rested much, her face was so black and white, and her eyes like the eyes of a fever." "I know all that, get to the end," I said harshly. It cut me to the heart, angering me almost beyond bearing, to hear him catalogue her weariness so bluntly, and know how bitterly I must still make her suffer. "You said, Tell all you know," he answered. "But as to the end, the end was that, telling me to stand aside, she spoke a minute or two to the woman, shrinking from her first, then catching her in her arms as if she was her sister, and a bouncing armful she is--she'd make two of Mademoiselle. She took her to Father Paul's room, which was empty, and bade me tell you that Mademoiselle Suzanne wanted you. 'Remember,' said she, 'remember to say Mademoiselle Suzanne wants him.'" "Come, then, but wait outside the door. If Father Paul should return, tell him what you have told me, but let no one else in." The room was long and narrow. In three of the corners there were beds, and in the fourth a bench; a table carrying a lighted lamp stood in the centre. At the further end a window overlooked the roof of an outhouse with a walled lane beyond. The casement was open, and through it came the clear sound of voices from the lane's-folk taking the air in the slowly cooling August heat. The two women were by the table, Mademoiselle de Narbonne at its side and facing the door, her companion at the end nearest the window, which she fronted. The hood of her cloak hung back upon her shoulders, and as I closed the door she turned. "Brigitta!" "Brigitta, M'sieu," and with a giggling laugh she dipped an awkward curtsey. Then I knew why I had hated to see Mademoiselle so salute me in the old days of her masquerade at Morsigny; it seemed to lower her to the level of this Flanders peasant. From Brigitta I looked with anxious apprehension to Mademoiselle de Narbonne, but to my relief she was smiling through a twinkle of tears, and the look of heavy care which had oppressed her these ten days was entirely lifted. "Brigitta! I thought you were in Plessis?"