"Am no match for him in strength or arms," the minister answered sadly. "Else would I do it! Else would I stake my life, Heaven knows, as gladly to save their lives as I sit down to meat! But I should fail, and if I failed all were lost. Moreover," he continued solemnly, "I am certified that this task has been set for you. It was not for nothing, Madame, nor to save one poor household that you were joined to this man; but to ransom all these lives and this great city. To be the Judith of our faith, the saviour of Angers, the--"
"Fool! Fool!" she cried. "Will you be silent?" And she stamped the turf passionately, while her eyes blazed in her white face. "I am no Judith, and no madwoman as you are fain to make me. Mad?" she continued, overwhelmed with agitation, "My God, I would I were, and I should be free from this!" And, turning, she walked a little way from him with the gesture of one under a crushing burden.
He waited a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and still she did not return. At length she came back, her bearing more composed; she looked at him, and her eyes seized his and seemed as if they would read his soul.
"Are you sure," she said, "of what you have told me? Will you swear that the contents of these letters are as you say?"
"As I live," he answered gravely. "As God lives."
"And you know--of no other way, Monsieur? Of no other way?" she repeated slowly and piteously.
"Of none, Madame, of none, I swear."
She sighed deeply, and stood sunk in thought. Then, "When do we reach Angers?" she asked heavily.
"The day after to-morrow."
"I have--until the day after to-morrow?"
"Yes. To-night we lie near Vendome."
"And to-morrow night?"
"Near a place called La Fleche. It is possible," he went on with hesitation--for he did not understand her--"that he may bathe to-morrow, and may hand the packet to you, as he did to-day when I vainly sought speech with you. If he does that--"
"Yes?" she said, her eyes on his face.
"The taking will be easy. But when he finds you have it not"--he faltered anew--"it may go hard with you."
She did not speak.
"And there, I think, I can help you. If you will stray from the party, I will meet you and destroy the letter. That done--and would God it were done already--I will take to flight as best I can, and you will raise the alarm and say that I robbed you of it! And if you tear your dress--"
"No," she said.
He looked a question.
"No!" she repeated in a low voice. "If I betray him I will not lie to him! And no other shall pay the price! If I ruin him it shall be between him and me, and no other shall have part in it!"
He shook his head. "I do not know," he murmured, "what he may do to you!"
"Nor I," she said proudly. "That will be for him."
* * * * *
Curious eyes had watched the two as they climbed the hill. For the path ran up the slope to the gap which served for gate, much as the path leads up to the Castle Beautiful in old prints of the Pilgrim's journey, and Madame St. Lo had marked the first halt and the second, and, noting every gesture, had lost nothing of the interview save the words. But until the two, after pausing a moment, passed out of sight she made no sign. Then she laughed. And as Count Hannibal, at whom the laugh was aimed, did not heed her, she laughed again. And she hummed the line of Ronsard.
Still he would not be roused, and, piqued, she had recourse to words.
"I wonder what you would do," she said, "if the old lover followed us, and she went off with him!"
"She would not go," he answered coldly, and without looking up.
"But if he rode off with her?"
"She would come back on her feet!"
Madame St. Lo's prudence was not proof against that. She had the woman's inclination to hide a woman's secret; and she had not intended, when she laughed, to do more than play with the formidable man with whom so few dared to play. Now, stung by his tone and his assurance, she must needs show him that his trustfulness had no base. And, as so often happens in the circumstances, she went a little farther than the facts bore her.
"Any way, he has followed us so far!" she cried viciously.
"M. de Tignonville?"
"Yes. I saw him this morning while you were bathing. She left me and went into the little coppice. He came down the other side of the brook, stooping and running, and went to join her."
"How did he cross the brook?"
Madame St. Lo blushed. "Old Badelon was there, gathering simples," she said. "He scared him. And he crawled away."
"Then he did not cross?"
"No. I did not say he did!"
"Nor speak to her?"
"No. But if you think it will pass so next time--you do not know much of women!"
"Of women generally, not much," he answered, grimly polite. "Of this woman a great deal!"
"You looked in her big eyes, I suppose!" Madame St. Lo cried with heat. "And straightway fell down and worshipped her!" She liked rather than disliked the Countess; but she was of the lightest, and the least opposition drove her out of her course. "And you think you know her! And she, if she could save you from death by opening an eye, would go with a patch on it till her dying day! Take my word for it, Monsieur, between her and her lover you will come to harm."
Count Hannibal's swarthy face darkened a tone, and his eyes grew a very little smaller.
"I fancy that he runs the greater risk," he muttered.
"You may deal with him, but, for her--"
"I can deal with her. You deal with some women with a whip--"
"You would whip me, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "It would do you good, Madame. And with other women otherwise. There are women who, if they are well frightened, will not deceive you. And there are others who will not deceive you though they are frightened. Madame de Tavannes is of the latter kind."
"Wait! Wait and see!" Madame cried in scorn.
"I am waiting."
"Yes! And whereas if you had come to me I could have told her that about M. de Tignonville which would have surprised her, you will go on waiting and waiting and waiting until one fine day you'll wake up and find Madame gone, and--"
"Then I'll take a wife I can whip!" he answered, with a look which apprised her how far she had carried it. "But it will not be you, sweet cousin. For I have no whip heavy enough for your case."
CHAPTER XXI. SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT.
We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as a stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting almost to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealings with a retiring