"It was manna from heaven, Mademoiselle. See, I have taken it all--every precious drop. What else could I have done for Mademoiselle's kindness?"He showed her the empty bowl. A swift conviction came upon her that the man had been suffering from want of food. The thought restored her self-possession even while it brought the tears to her eyes. "I wish you would let me speak to father--or some one," she said impulsively, and stopped.
A quick and half insane gleam of terror and suspicion lit up his deep eyes. "For what, Mademoiselle! For an accident--that is nothing--absolutely nothing, for I am strong and well now--see!" he said tremblingly. "Or for a whim--for a folly you may say, that they will misunderstand. No, Mademoiselle is good, is wise. She will say to herself, 'I understand, my friend Monsieur de Ferrieres for the moment has a secret. He would seem poor, he would take the role of artisan, he would shut himself up in these walls--perhaps Imay guess why, but it is his secret. I think of it no more.'" He caught her hand in his with a gesture that he would have made one of gallantry, but that in its tremulous intensity became a piteous supplication.
"I have said nothing, and will say nothing, if you wish it," said Rosey hastily; "but others may find out how you live here. This is not fit work for you. You seem to be a--a gentleman. You ought to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or in a bank," she continued timidly, with a vague enumeration of the prevailing degrees of local gentility.
He dropped her hand. "Ah! does not Mademoiselle comprehend that it is BECAUSE I am a gentleman that there is nothing between it and this? Look!" he continued almost fiercely. "What if I told you it is the lawyer, it is the doctor, it is the banker that brings me, a gentleman, to this, eh? Ah, bah! What do I say? This is honest, what I do! But the lawyer, the banker, the doctor, what are they?"He shrugged his shoulders, and pacing the apartment with a furtive glance at the half anxious, half frightened girl, suddenly stopped, dragged a small portmanteau from behind the heap of bales and opened it. "Look, Mademoiselle," he said, tremulously lifting a handful of worn and soiled letters and papers. "Look--these are the tools of your banker, your lawyer, your doctor. With this the banker will make you poor, the lawyer will prove you a thief, the doctor will swear you are crazy, eh? What shall you call the work of a gentleman--this"--he dragged the pile of cushions forward--"or this?"To the young girl's observant eyes some of the papers appeared to be of a legal or official character, and others like bills of lading, with which she was familiar. Their half-theatrical exhibition reminded her of some play she had seen; they might be the clue to some story, or the mere worthless hoardings of a diseased fancy. Whatever they were, de Ferrieres did not apparently care to explain further; indeed, the next moment his manner changed to his old absurd extravagance. "But this is stupid for Mademoiselle to hear. What shall we speak of? Ah, what SHOULDwe speak of in Mademoiselle's presence?"
"But are not these papers valuable?" asked Rosey, partly to draw her host's thoughts back to their former channel.
"Perhaps." He paused and regarded the young girl fixedly. "Does Mademoiselle think so?""I don't know," said Rosey. "How should I?""Ah! if Mademoiselle thought so--if Mademoiselle would deign--" He stopped again and placed his hand upon his forehead. "It might be so!" he muttered.
"I must go now," said Rosey, hurriedly, rising with an awkward sense of constraint. "Father will wonder where I am.""I shall explain. I will accompany you, Mademoiselle.""No, no," said Rosey, quickly; "he must not know I have been here!"She stopped. The honest blush flew to her cheek, and then returned again, because she had blushed.
De Ferrieres gazed at her with an exalted look. Then drawing himself to his full height, he said, with an exaggerated and indescribable gesture, "Go, my child, go. Tell your father that you have been alone and unprotected in the abode of poverty and suffering, but--that it was in the presence of Armand de Ferrieres."He threw open the door with a bow that nearly swept the ground, but did not again offer to take her hand. At once impressed and embarrassed at this crowning incongruity, her pretty lip trembled between a smile and a cry as she said, "Good-night," and slipped away into the darkness.
Erect and grotesque de Ferrieres retained the same attitude until the sound of her footsteps was lost, when he slowly began to close the door. But a strong arm arrested it from without, and a large carpeted foot appeared at the bottom of the narrowing opening. The door yielded, and Mr. Abner Nott entered the room.