Almost to her side I came before she was aware of me, so intent she was upon her purpose. Two men of the village, fishermen whom I knew, she had summoned to her, and was passionately urging them to take her to Kenneticook. But for all her beauty, her enthralling charm, they hung back doggedly—being but dull clods, and in a shaking terror at the very name of the Black Abbé. It passed my comprehension that they should have any power at all when those wonderful eyes burned upon them. Never had I seen her so beautiful as then, her face wild with entreaty, her bewildering hair half fallen about her shoulders. A white, soft-falling shawl, such as I had never before seen her wear, was flung about her, and one little hand with its live, restless fingers clutched the fabric closely to her throat, as if she had been disturbed at her toilet.

I was about to interrupt her, for there was no moment to lose if I would accomplish my purpose; 113but of a sudden she seemed to realize the hopelessness of her effort to move these stolid fishermen. Flinging out her arms with a gesture of bitterness and despair, she cried, pointing to Nicole’s boat:

“Push off the boat, you cowards, and I will go alone!”

And turning upon the word she found herself face to face with me.

Even in that light I could see her lips go ashen, and for a moment I thought she would drop. I sprang to catch her, but she recovered, and shrank in a kind of speechless fury from my touch. Then she found words for me, dreadful words for me to hear:

“Traitor! Assassin! Still you to persecute and thwart me. It is you they fear. It is you who plan the murder of that good and true man—you who will not let me go to warn him!” Then her voice broke into a wilder, more beseeching tone: “Oh, if you have one spark of shame, remember! Let them push off the boat; and let me go, that I may try to save him!”

Her reproaches hurt me not, but what seemed her passion for him steadied me and made me hard.

“You are mad, mademoiselle!” I answered sternly. “I am going to save him.”

“As you have saved our house to-night!” she 114cried, with a laugh that went through me like a sword.

“I was outwitted by my enemies—and yours, mademoiselle. I go now to warn him. Push down the boat, men. Haste! Haste!” I ordered, turning from her.

But she came close in front of me, her great eyes blazed up in my face, and she cried, “You go to see that he does not escape your hate!”

“Listen, mademoiselle,” I said sharply. “I swear to you by the mother of God that you have utterly misjudged me! I am no traitor. I have been a fool; or my sword would have been at your father’s side to-night. I swear to you that I go now to expiate my mistake by saving your lover for you.”

The first wave of doubt as to my treason came into her eyes at this; but her lips curled in bitter unbelief. Before she c............