"God grant he does not silence me before I have called him traitor!" she cried passionately; and then her mood changed suddenly, and a soft look came into her eyes. "I was wrong to let him ride back to Vayenne," she murmured; and for a little while she sat thinking, her mental vision reaching far beyond the four walls of her chamber, seeing the rough hut, the smouldering peat fire, and a man kneeling to her, swearing to serve her to the death.
Suddenly she shook herself free of such dreams. This was no time for visions. Even now Felix might be planning the death of this man—and of Lemasle. They must be saved. She would go to the castle to-night. The room seemed to have grown hot and stifling, and she threw open the window to fill her lungs with the cool night air.
Below her, the garden was in darkness. The night was overcast, but the trees were whispering together, and from the distance came the faint music of the carillon.
"I will go," she said, turning quickly from the window. "In some dungeon that music may penetrate to him as he counts the hours to dawn—and death. Felix shall listen to me."
The borrowed cloak was lying on a chair. She hastily wrapped it round her, and her hand was upon the key in the door when she stopped and turned round sharply.
"Mademoiselle!"
There was a face at the open window, a shaggy head that might well startle any woman, and two knotted hands grasped the window-frame, the muscles straining as the man drew himself slowly in.
"Pardon, mademoiselle. I have waited a long time. I knew no other way to get to you."
"Jean!"
"At your service, mademoiselle," said the dwarf as he got into the room and fell on his knee before her, a strangely grotesque figure, yet surely an honest man.