with a polite apology for thus intruding under the pressure of so disagreeable a necessity.
He had scarcely framed a sentence ere he became deadly pale, and began to stammer, as if he, too, was under the influence of some engrossing and incontrollable emotion.
The two women had shrunk into the farthest corner of the room. With the prospect of a rescue, Madame de Montmirail's nerves, strung to their utmost tension, had completely given way. In a state of mental and bodily prostration, she had laid her head in the lap of Cerise, whose courage, being of a more passive nature, did not now fail her so entirely.
The girl, indeed, pushing her hair back from her temples, looked wildly in George's face for an instant, like one who wakes from a dream; but the next, her whole countenance lit up with delight, and holding out both hands to him, she exclaimed, in accents of irrepressible tenderness and self-abandonment, "C'est toi!" then the pale face flushed crimson, and the loving eyes drooped beneath his own. To him she had always been beautiful—most beautiful, perhaps, in his dreams—but never in dreams nor in waking reality so beautiful as now.
He gazed on her entranced, motionless, forgetful of everything in the world but that one loved being restored, as it seemed, by a miracle, at the very time when she had been most lost to him. His stout heart, thrilling to its core from her glance, quailed to think of what must have befallen had he arrived a minute too late, and a prayer went up from it of hearty humble thanksgiving that he was in time. He saw nothing but that drooping form in its delicate white dress, with its gentle feminine gestures and rich dishevelled hair; heard nothing but the accents of that well-remembered voice vibrating with the love that he felt was deep and tender as his own. He was unconscious of the cheers of his victorious boat's crew, of the groans and shrieks uttered by wounded or routed negroes, of the dead beneath his feet, the blazing rafters overhead, the showers of sparks and rolling clouds of smoke that already filled the house; unconscious even of Madame de Montmirail's recovery from her stupor, as she too recognised him, and raising herself
