“I must go,” I said, shaking off the ridiculous and troublesome idea.  “I have been away nearly six days.  Six days is a long holiday for a doctor.”

“It has not been a holiday for you,” she whispered, her eyes fastened upon mine, and shining like clear stars.

“Well,” I repeated, “I must go.  Before I go I wish to write to your friends for you.  You will not be strong enough to write yourself for some days, and it is quite time they knew what danger you have been in.  I have brought a pen and paper, and I will post the letter as soon as I reach Guernsey.”

A faint flush colored her face, and she turned her eyes away from me.

“Why do you think I ought to write?” she asked at length.

“Because you have been very near death.”  I answered.  “If you had died, not one of us would have known whom to communicate with, unless you had left some direction in that box of yours, which is not very likely.”

“No,” she said, “you would find nothing there.  I suppose if I had died nobody would ever have known who I am.  How curious that would have been!”

Was she amused, or was she saddened by the thought?  I could not tell.

“It would have been very painful to Tardif and to me,” I said.  “It must be very painful to your friends, whoever they are, not to know what has become of you.  Give me permission to write to them.  There can scarcely be reasons sufficient for you to separate yourself from them like this.  Besides, you cannot go on living in a fisherman’s cottage; you were not born to it—­”

“How do you know?” she asked, quickly, with a sharp tone in her voice.

It was somewhat difficult to answer that question.  There was nothing to indicate what position she had been used to.  I had seen no token of wealth about her room, which was as homely as any other cottage chamber.  Her conversation had been the simple, childish talk of an invalid recovering from a serious illness, and had scarcely proved her to be an educated person.  Yet there was something in her face and tones and manner which, as plainly to Tardif as to me, stamped this runaway girl as a lady.

“Let me write to your friends,” I urged, waiving the question.  “It is not fit for you to remain here.  I beg of you to allow me to communicate with them.”

Her face quivered like a child’s when it is partly frightened and partly grieved.

“I have no friends,” she said; “not one real friend in the world.”

An almost irresistible inclination assailed me to fall on my knees beside her, as I had seen Tardif do, and take a solemn oath to be her faithful servant and friend as long as my life should last.  This, of course, I did not do; but the sound of the words so plaintively spoken, and the sight of her quivering face, rendered her a hundredfold more interesting to me.

“Mam’zelle,” I said, taking her hand in mine, “if ever you should need a friend, you may count upon Martin Dobree as one as true as any you could wish to have.  Tardif is another.  Never say again you have no friends.”