"In good time thou shalt see her," said Ropars, who according to the custom of the Bretagne peasantry only _thee'd_ and _thou'd_ Geneviève, when under the influence of strong emotion; "but first thou must listen with all attention, for what I have to tell thee is of the deepest consequence.""Ah! I would, I would!" was her reply, putting both hands up to her head; "but don't be hurt, Mathieu, if it be impossible. I hear yonder, look you, something that hushes up all the rest; it is her death-rattle, my good man!... And ... do you know?... I like the anguish that it causes me, to hear it; I can fancy that there still is breath in her. Oh! Jesus! who would have told me, that I should yearn after the dying breath of my child?" Ropars laid a hand upon the head of the miserable woman, whose sobbings had recommenced.
"Be soothed at heart," he said to her with touching firmness; "the good God wills that we should submit, and not thus give way. The dead one is now in her Paradise, where she has no more need of us; but she leaves behind her a sister, whose life is in our charge."
"How do you mean?" asked Geneviève, raising towards him her eyes, in which alarm had arrested the tears.
"Don't you understand?" returned the keeper, lowering his voice; "the breath of the disease is like the sea-wind; it spares no one; and it may send, at any instant, the living to rejoin the dead."
"Heavenly Saviour! is this a warning?" demanded Geneviève, clasping her hands. "Must this child too, be struck down?... Have you remarked any thing?... Ah! tell the truth, Mathieu, tell it at once; I would rather be killed at one blow."
"So far, the child suffers from nothing but her distress," rejoined Ropars; "but if she remains in this deadly air, who can guarantee us that she will escape?"
"Evil upon us!" cried Geneviève, raising her joined hands over her head; "why did you remind me of it, Mathieu? I did not wish to think of it; and now I shall see her dying, every hour. God forgive you for thus turning the blade that is within my heart!"
"If I touch it, it is but to withdraw it," was the quarter-master's answer. "It won't do now to shut one's eyes and let the squall overtake us; we must work ship with all our might for the little one's safety.... If she remains on the island, you have too many chances of sewing up her winding-sheet, Geneviève; she must leave it forthwith."
"But how?"
Ropars threw his eyes around him, to satisfy himself that he was not overheard.
"There is a way," he replied cautiously.
"The powder-magazine skiff?"
"No!"
"The gun-boat?"
"She's there, you know, to keep guard over the island."
"But who then can help us?"
"The tide."

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