She bowed her head, smiling.  Beauvouloir divined all.

“Monseigneur,” he said, “your mind and your knowledge can make you eloquent, and the force of your love may be irresistible.  Declare it to monseigneur the duke; you will thus confirm my letter.  All is not lost, I think.  I love my daughter as well as you love her, and I shall defend her.”

Etienne shook his head.

“The sea was very dark to-night,” he repeated.

“It was like a sheet of gold at our feet,” said Gabrielle in a voice of melody.

Etienne ordered lights, and sat down at a table to write to his father.  On one side of him knelt Gabrielle, silent, watching the words he wrote, but not reading them; she read all on Etienne’s forehead.  On his other side stood old Beauvouloir, whose jovial countenance was deeply sad,—­sad as that gloomy chamber where Etienne’s mother died.  A secret voice cried to the doctor, “The fate of his mother awaits him!”

When the letter was written, Etienne held it out to the old man, who hastened to give it to Bertrand.  The old retainer’s horse was waiting in the courtyard, saddled; the man himself was ready.  He started, and met the duke twelve miles from Herouville.

“Come with me to the gate of the courtyard,” said Gabrielle to her friend when they were alone.

The pair passed through the cardinal’s library, and went down through the tower, in which was a door, the key of which Etienne had given to Gabrielle.  Stupefied by the dread of coming evil, the poor youth left in the tower the torch he had brought to light the steps of his beloved, and continued with her toward the cottage.  A few steps from the little garden, which formed a sort of flowery courtyard to the humble habitation, the lovers stopped.  Emboldened by the vague alarm which oppressed them, they gave each other, in the shades of night, in the silence, that first kiss in which the senses and the soul unite, and cause a revealing joy.  Etienne comprehended love in its dual expression, and Gabrielle fled lest she should be drawn by that love —­whither she knew not.

At the moment when the Duc de Nivron reascended the staircase to the castle, after closing the door of the tower, a cry of horror, uttered by Gabrielle, echoed in his ears with the sharpness of a flash of lightning which burns the eyes.  Etienne ran through the apartments of the chateau, down the grand staircase, and along the beach towards Gabrielle’s house, where he saw lights.

When Gabrielle, quitting her lover, had entered the little garden, she saw, by the gleam of a torch which lighted her nurse’s spinning-wheel, the figure of a man sitting in the chair of that excellent woman.  At the sound of her steps the man arose and came toward her; this had frightened her, and she gave the cry.  The presence and aspect of the Baron d’Artagnon amply justified the fear thus inspired in the young girl’s breast.

“Are you the daughter of Beauvouloir, monseigneur’s physician?” asked the baron when Gabrielle’s first alarm had subsided.