We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon, M. de Cocheforet, Mademoiselle, and I. We had reversed the order of yesterday, and I rode ahead; they came after at their leisure. Now, at the foot of the hill I stopped, and letting Mademoiselle pass on, detained M. de Cocheforet by a gesture. ‘Pardon me, one moment,’ I said. ‘I want to ask a favour.’ He looked at me somewhat fretfully; with a gleam of wildness in his eyes that betrayed how the iron was, little by little, eating into his heart. He had started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually he had sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb his impatience. ‘Of me?’ he said bitterly. ‘What is it?’ ‘I wish to have a few words with Mademoiselle--alone,’ I said. ‘Alone?’ he exclaimed in astonishment. ‘Yes,’ I replied, without blenching, though his face grew dark. ‘For the matter of that, you can be within call all the time, if you please. But I have a reason for wishing to ride a little way with her.’ ‘To tell her something?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you can tell it to me,’ he retorted suspiciously. ‘Mademoiselle, I will answer for it, has no desire to--’ ‘See me or speak to me? No,’ I said. ‘I can understand that. Yet I want to speak to her.’ ‘Very well, you can speak in my presence,’ he answered rudely. ‘If that be all, let us ride on and join her.’ And he made a movement as if to do so. ‘That will not do, M. de Cocheforet,’ I said firmly, stopping him with my hand. ‘Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent it all her life.’ He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker. ‘Fine words,’ he said, with a sneer. ‘Yet I fancy I understand them.’ And then with a passionate oath he broke out. ‘But I will not have it! I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I will not have it. I will have no such Judas bargain made. PARDIEU! do you think I could suffer it and show my face again?’ ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, restraining myself with difficulty. I could have struck the fool. ‘But I know what you mean,’ he replied, in a tone of suppressed rage. ‘You would have her sell herself; sell herself to you to save me. And you would have me stand by and see the thing done. No, sir, never; never, though I go to the wheel. I will die a gentleman, if I have lived a fool.’ ‘I think that you will do the one as certainly as you have done the other,’ I retorted in my exasperation. And yet I admired him. ‘Oh, I am not quite a fool!’ he cried, scowling at me. ‘I have used my eyes.’