The young man sat for a long while where St. Aulaire had left him,
pondering upon this strange meeting and the mysterious hints and threats
thrown out. He could make nothing of them, but it was clear that some
danger menaced those he loved in France, and he felt only too well
assured that St. Aulaire would stop at nothing. Indeed, it did not need
a personal and malignant enemy to bring terror and death to any in
Paris, as he knew. Terror and death were in the air. The last despatches
from the capital had told of almost inconceivable horrors being there
perpetrated. "Aristocrats in Paris must keep quiet or the aristocrats
will hang," Mr. Morris had said to him tersely one evening just before
leaving.
Suddenly an overwhelming desire to go to France, to be near Adrienne,
to avert, if humanly possible, this unknown, but, as he felt, no less
real danger, took possession of him. All the tenderness for her, which
he had hoped and believed was dying within him, revived at the thought
of the peril she was in. For himself he felt there could be no danger,
and it was possible that his standing as an American and his close
connection with the American Minister might be of service to her.
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