"Yes," he said, "Miss Chandore."

"At this hour, in my prison!"

"She had something important to communicate to you. She came to me"--

"O Dionysia!" stammered Jacques, "what a precious friend"--

"And I agreed," said Blangin in a paternal tone of voice, "to bring her
in secretly. It is a great sin I commit; and if it ever should become
known--But one may be ever so much a jailer, one has a heart, after all.
I tell you so merely because the young lady might not think of it. If
the secret is not kept carefully, I should lose my place, and I am a
poor man, with wife and children."

"You are the best of men!" exclaimed M. de Boiscoran, far from
suspecting the price that had been paid for Blangin's sympathy, "and, on
the day on which I regain my liberty, I will prove to you that we whom
you have obliged are not ungrateful."

"Quite at your service," replied the jailer modestly.

Gradually, however, Dionysia had recovered her self-possession. She said
gently to Blangin,--

"Leave us now, my good friend."

As soon as he had disappeared, and without allowing M. de Boiscoran to
say a word, she said, speaking very low,--