From Chatellerault there came an impatient snort in answer, and his feet again smote the floor as he resumed the pacing that for a moment he had suspended. Then followed a pause, a long silence, broken only by the Count's restless walking to and fro. At last "Why are you silent, monsieur?" she asked in a trembling voice.
"Helas, mademoiselle, I can do nothing. I had feared that it might be thus with you; and, if I put the question, it was in the hope that I was wrong."
"But he, monsieur?" she exclaimed in anguish. "What of him?"
"Believe me, mademoiselle, if it lay in my power I would save him were he never so guilty, if only that I might spare you sorrow."
He spoke with tender regret, foul hypocrite that he was!
"Oh, no, no!" she cried, and her voice was of horror and despair. "You do not mean that--" She stopped short; and then, after a pause, it was the Count who finished the sentence for her.
"I mean, mademoiselle, that this Lesperon must die!"
You will marvel that I let her suffer so, that I did not break down the partition with my hands and strike that supple gentleman dead at her feet in atonement for the anguish he was causing her. But I had a mind to see how far he would drive this game he was engaged upon.
Again there was a spell of silence, and at last, when Mademoiselle spoke, I was amazed at the calm voice in which she addressed him, marvelling at the strength and courage of one so frail and childlike to behold.
"Is your determination, indeed, irrevocable, monsieur? If you have any pity, will you not at least let me bear my prayers and my tears to the King?"
"It would avail you nothing. As I have said, the Languedoc rebels are in my hands." He paused as if to let those words sink well into her understanding; then, "If I were to set him at liberty, mademoiselle, if I were to spirit him out of prison in the night, bribing his jailers to keep silent and binding him by oath to quit France at once and never to betray me, I should be, myself, guilty of high treason. Thus alone could the thing be done, and you will see, mademoiselle, that by doing it I should be endangering my neck."
There was an ineffable undercurrent of meaning in his words--an intangible suggestion that he might be bribed to do all this to which he so vaguely alluded.
"I understand, monsieur," she answered, choking--"I understand that it would be too much to ask of you."