to meet made no bones at all about his welcome; he took her in his arms and kissed her for five minutes together.
You may think that this discovery surprised me. I can never remember any thing in all my life which so completely knocked me over. For minutes together my brain was in a perfect whirl. Who, then, I asked myself, is the Comte de Faugère? why does his sister wear a man's clothes and meet him at twelve o'clock at night in a wood? why does he kiss her like a boy-lover kissing a schoolgirl? A hundred answers flashed upon my mind—one as impossible as the other—a hundred speculations were raised only to be put aside again. Listen as I would, I could get no help from the talk between them. For a long time nothing but stray words came to me; when at last the pair turned toward the house together, the few sentences I put together were so much Greek.
"Jean leaves to-morrow," said she, and I could see that their arms were locked together; "it will be forty-eight hours, I fear."
"What of Marmontel?" said he in answer to this.
"A week should work that," she replied; "but he is an old fool."
They walked a few more steps in silence, and then, just as they were at the door, he said;
"It was understood about the signals and the lantern."
"Of course it was—and the wine," she answered; and with this on her lips, she disappeared into the
