She groped for the latch, and in the act fancied his breathing was changed. She paused, and bent her head to listen. But the patter of the rain, drowning all sounds save those of the nearest origin, persuaded her that she was mistaken, and, finding the latch, she raised it, slipped like a shadow into the passage, and closed the door behind her.
That done she stood arrested, all the blood in her body running to her heart. She must be dreaming! The passage in which she stood--the passage which she had left in black darkness--was alight; was so far lighted, at least, that to eyes fresh from the night, the figures of three men, grouped at the farther end, stood out against the glow of the lanthorn which they appeared to be trimming--for the two nearest were stooping over it. These two had their backs to her, the third his face; and it was the sight of this third man which had driven the blood to her heart. He ended at the waist! It was only after a few seconds, it was only when she had gazed at him awhile in speechless horror, that he rose another foot from the floor, and she saw that he had paused in the act of ascending through a trapdoor. What the scene meant, who these men were, or what their entrance portended, with these questions her brain refused at the moment to grapple. It was much that--still remembering who might hear her, and what she held--she did not shriek aloud.
Instead, she stood in the gloom at her end of the passage, gazing with all her eyes until she had seen the third man step clear of the trap. She could see him; but the light intervened and blurred his view of her. He stooped, almost as soon as he had cleared himself, to help up a fourth man, who rose with a naked knife between his teeth. She saw then that all were armed, and something stealthy in their bearing, something cruel in their eyes as the light of the lanthorn fell now on one dark face and now on another, went to her heart and chilled it. Who were they, and why were they here? What was their purpose? As her reason awoke, as she asked herself these questions, the fourth man stooped in his turn, and gave his hand to a fifth. And on that she lost her self-control, and cried out. For the last man to ascend was La Tribe--La Tribe, from whom she had parted that morning.
The sound she uttered was low, but it reached the men's ears, and the two whose backs were towards her turned as if they had been pricked. He who held the lanthorn raised it, and the five glared at her and she at them. Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst from her lips. The nearest man, he who held the lanthorn high that he might view her, was Tignonville, was her lover!
"_Mon Dieu_!" she whispered. "What is it? What is it?"
Then, not till then, did he know her. Until then the light of the lanthorn had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy phantom which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious terror. But they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream, Tignonville came forward.
The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct rather than upon reason. The girl never knew why she acted as she did; why she asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no remonstrances; why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she put the packet into his hands.
He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the hand which held his bare blade. That done, silent as she, with his eyes set hard, he would have gone by her. The sight of her _there_, guarding the door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his worst passions. But she moved to hinder him, and barred the way. With her hand raised she pointed to the trapdoor.
"Go!" she whispered, her tone stern and low, "you have what you want! Go!"
"No!" And he tried to pass her.
"Go!" she repeated in the same tone. "You have what you need." And still she held her hand extended; still without faltering she faced the five men, while the thunder, growing more distant, rolled sullenly eastward, and the midnight rain, pouring from every spout and dripping eave about the house, wrapped the passage in its sibilant hush. Gradually her eyes dominated his, gradually her nobler nature and nobler aim subdued his weaker parts. For she understood now; and he saw that she did, and had he been alone he would have slunk away, and said no word in his defence.
But one of the men, savage and out of patience, thrust himself between them.
"Where is he?" he muttered. "What is the use of this? Where is he?" And his bloodshot eyes--it was Tuez-les-Moines--questioned the doors, while his hand, trembling and shaking on the haft of his knife, bespoke his eagerness. "Where is he? Where is he, woman? Quick, or--"
"I shall not tell you," she answered.
"You lie," he cried, grinning like a dog. "You will tell us! Or we will kill you too! Where is he? Where is he?"
"I shall not tell you," she repeated, standing before him in the fearlessness of scorn. "Another step and I rouse the house! M. de Tignonville, to you who know me, I swear that if this man does not retire--"
"He is in one of these rooms?" was Tignonville's answer. "In which? In which?"
"Search them!" she answered, her voice low, but biting in its contempt. "Try them. Rouse my women, alarm the house! And when you have his people at your throats--five as they will be to one of you--thank your own mad folly!"
Tuez-les-Moines' eyes glittered. "You will not tell us?" he cried.
"No!"
"Then--"
But as the fanatic sprang on her, La Tribe flung his arms round him and dragged him back.
"It would be madness," he cried. "Are you mad, fool? Have done!" he panted, struggling with him. "If Madame gives the alarm--and he may be in any one of these four rooms, you cannot be sure which--we are undone." He looked for support to Tignonville, whose movement to protect the girl he had anticipated, and who had since listened sullenly. "We have obtained what we need. Will you requite Madame, who has gained it for us at her own risk--"
"It is Monsieur I would requite," Tignonville muttered grimly.
"By using violence to her?" the minister retorted passionately. He and Tuez were still gripping one another. "I tell you, to go on is to risk what we have got! And I for one--"
"Am chicken-hearted!" the young man sneered. "Madame--" He seemed to choke on the word. "Will you swear that he is not here?"
"I swear that if you do not go I will raise the alarm!" she hissed--all their words were sunk to that stealthy note. "Go! if you have not stayed too long already. Go! Or see!" And she pointed to the trapdoor, from which the face and arms of a sixth man had that moment risen--the face dark with perturbation, so that her woman's wit told her at once that something was amiss. "See what has come of your delay already!"
"The water is rising," the man muttered earnestly. "In God's name come, whether you have done it or not, or we cannot pass out again. It is within a foot of the crown of the culvert now, and it is rising."
"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper. "And on this Jezebel. Let us kill her and him! What matter afterwards?" And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.
But the minister held him desperately. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he answered. "What can we do against thirty? Let us be gone while we can. Let us be gone! Come."
"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly. He had taken no side hitherto. "The luck is against us! 'Tis no use to-night, man!" And he turned with an air of sullen resignation. Letting his legs drop through the trap, he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight. Another made up his mind to go, and went. Then only Tignonville, holding the lanthorn, and La Tribe, who feared to release Tuez-les-Moines, remained with the fanatic.
The Countess's eyes met her old lover's, and whether old memories overcame her, or, now that the danger was nearly past, she began to give way, she swayed a little on her feet. But he did not notice it. He was sunk in black rage--rage