第55章 CHAPTER XII(5)

But, speaking for myself, I would have spent half the blood in my body to purchase the feeling with which I turned back to speak to M. de Cocheforet and his sister. Mademoiselle had dismounted, and with her face averted and her mask pushed on one side, was openly weeping. Her brother, who had faithfully kept his place by the ford from the beginning of the fight to the end, met me with raised eyebrows and a peculiar smile.

'Acknowledge my virtue,' he said airily. 'I am here, M. de Berault; which is more than can be said of the two gentlemen who have just ridden off.'

'Yes,' I answered with a touch of bitterness. 'I wish that they had not shot my poor man before they went.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'They were my friends,' he said. 'You must not expect me to blame them. But that is not all, M. de Berault.'

'No,' I said, wiping my sword. 'There is this gentleman in the mask.' And I turned to go towards him.

'M. de Berault!' Cocheforet called after me, his tone strained and abrupt.

I stood. 'Pardon?' I said, turning, 'That gentleman?' he said, hesitating and looking at me doubtfully. 'Have you considered what will happen to him if you give him up to the authorities?'

'Who is he?' I asked sharply.

'That is rather a delicate question,' he answered frowning.

'Not for me,' I replied brutally, 'since he is in my power. If he will take off his mask I shall know better what I intend to do with him.'

The stranger had lost his hat in his fall, and his fair hair, stained with dust, hung in curls on his shoulders. He was a tall man, of a slender, handsome presence, and, though his dress was plain and almost rough, I espied a splendid jewel on his hand, and fancied that I detected other signs of high quality. He still lay against the bank in a half-swooning condition, and seemed unconscious of my scrutiny.

'Should I know him if he unmasked?' I said suddenly, a new idea in my head.

'You would,' M. de Cocheforet answered.

'And?'

'It would be bad for everyone.'

'Ho! ho!' I replied softly, looking hard first at my old prisoner, and then at my new one. 'Then--what do you wish me to do?'

'Leave him here!' M. de Cocheforet answered, his face flushed, the pulse in his cheek beating.

I had known him for a man of perfect honour before, and trusted him. But this evident earnest anxiety on behalf of his friend touched me not a little. Besides, I knew that I was treading on slippery ground: that it behoved me to be careful.

'I will do it,' I said after a moment's reflection. 'He will play me no tricks, I suppose? A letter of--'

'MON DIEU, no! He will understand,' Cocheforet answered eagerly.

'You will not repent it. Let us be going.'

'Well, but my horse?' I said, somewhat taken aback by this extreme haste. 'How am I to--'

'We shall overtake it,' he assured me. 'It will have kept the road. Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can give orders there to have these two fetched and buried.'

I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so, after another word or two, it was arranged. We picked up what we had dropped, M. de Cocheforet helped his sister to mount, and within five minutes we were gone. Casting a glance back from the skirts of the wood I fancied that I saw the masked man straighten himself and turn to look after us, but the leaves were beginning to intervene, the distance may have cheated me. And yet I was not indisposed to think the unknown a trifle more observant, and a little less seriously hurt, than he seemed.