“Your affectionate
“LOUISON.
“P.S. I feel better now I have told you. I wonder what his Lordship will say. Poor thing! he will read this; he will think me a fool. Eh bien, I have no better thought of him. He can put me under lock and key, but he shall not imprison my secrets; and, if they bore him, he should not read my letters. L.”
I read it thrice, and held it for a moment to my lips. Every word stung me with the sweet pain that afflicted its author. I could feel my cheeks burning.
“Ma’m’selle, pardon me; it is not I she refers to. She does not say whom.”
“Surely,” said Therese, flirting her whip and lifting her shoulders. “M’sieur Le Capitaine is never a stupid man. You—you should say something very nice now.”
“If it is I—thank God! Her misery is my delight, her liberation my one purpose.”
“And my congratulations,” said she, giving me her hand. “She has wit and beauty, a true heart, a great fortune, and—good luck in having your love.”
I raised my hat, blushing to the roots of my hair.
“It is a pretty compliment,” I said. “And—and I have no gift of speech to thank you. I am not a match for you except in my love of kindness and—and of Louison. You have made me happier than I have been before.”
“If I have made you alert, ingenious, determined, I am content,” was her answer. “I know you have courage.”
“And will to use it.”
“Good luck and adieu!” said she, with a fine flourish of her whip; those people had always a pretty politeness of manner.
“Adieu,” I said, lifting my hat as I rode off, with a prick of the spur, for the road was long and I had lost quite half an hour.
My elation gave way to sober thought presently. I began to think of Louise—that quiet, frank, noble, beautiful, great-hearted girl, who might be suffering what trouble I knew not, and all silently, there in her prison home. A sadness grew in me, and then suddenly I saw the shadow of great trouble. I loved them both; I knew not which I loved the better. Yet this interview had almost committed me to Louison.