"It is my masterpiece," remarked the painter pensively. "Will you permit
me to say adieu, mesdames? I go to join my amiable and attentive
companion, Roupet the guard."
He bowed himself out.
Madame Solde drew Marie aside. Angers discreetly left.
The Governor's wife drew the girl's head back on her shoulder. "Marie,"
she said, "M. Tryon does not seem happy; cannot you change that?"
With quivering lips the girl laid her head on the Frenchwoman's breast,
and said: "Ah, do not ask me now. Madame, I am going home to-day."
"To-day? But, so soon!--I wished--"
"I must go to-day."
"But we had hoped you would stay while M. Tryon--"
"M. Tryon--will--go with me--perhaps."
"Ah, my dear Marie!" The woman kissed the girl, and wondered.
That afternoon Marie was riding across the Winter Valley to her father's
plantation at the Pascal River. Angers was driving ahead. Beside Marie
rode Tryon silent and attentive. Arrived at the homestead, she said to
him in the shadow of the naoulis: "Hugh Tryon, what would you do to prove
the love you say you have for me?"
"All that a man could do I would do."
"Can you see the Semaphore from here?"
"Yes, there it is clear against the sky--look!"
But the girl did not look. She touched her eyelids with her finger-tips,
as though they were fevered, and then said: "Many have escaped. They are
searching for Carbourd and--"
"Yes, Marie?"
"And M. Laflamme--"
"Laflamme!" he said sharply. Then, noticing how at his brusqueness the
paleness of her face changed to a startled flush for an instant, his
generosity conquered, and he added gently: "Well, I fancied he would try,
but what do you know about that, Marie?"
"He and Carbourd were friends. They were chained together in the
galleys, they lived--at first--together here. They would risk life to
return to France."
"Tell me," said he, "what do you know of this? What is it to you?"
"You wish to know all before you will do what I ask.
"I will do anything you ask, because you will not ask of me what is
unmanly."
"M. Laflamme will escape to-night if possible, and join Carbourd on the
Pascal River, at a safe spot that I know." She told him of the Cave.
"Yes, yes, I understand. You would help him. And I?"
"You will help me. You will?"
There was a slight pause, and then he said: "Yes, I will. But think what
this is to an Englishman-to yourself, to be accomplice to the escape of a
French prisoner."
"I gave a promise to a man whom I think deserves it. He believed he was
a patriot. If you were in that case, and I were a Frenchwoman, I would
do the same for you."
He smiled rather grimly and said: "If it please you that this man escape,
I shall hope he may, and will help you. . . . Here comes your
father."
"I could not let my father know," she said. "He has no sympathy for any
one like that, for any one at all, I think, but me."
"Don't be down-hearted. If you have set your heart on this, I will try
to bring it about, God knows! Now let us be less gloomy. Conspirators
should smile. That is the cue. Besides, the world is bright. Look at
the glow upon the hills."
"I suppose the Semaphore is glistening on the Hill of Pains; but I cannot
see it."
He did not understand her.