"With her own lips?"
Count Hannibal raised his eyebrows. "With her own lips, if you will," he
said. And then, advancing a step and addressing her, with unusual
gravity, "Mademoiselle de Vrillac," he said, "you hear what this
gentleman requires. Will you be pleased to confirm what I have said?"
She did not answer, and in the intense silence which held the room in its
freezing grasp a woman choked, another broke into weeping. The colour
ebbed from the cheeks of more than one; the men fidgeted on their feet.
Count Hannibal looked round, his head high. "There is no call for
tears," he said; and whether he spoke in irony or in a strange obtuseness
was known only to himself. "Mademoiselle is in no hurry--and rightly--to
answer a question so momentous. Under the pressure of utmost peril, she
passed her word; the more reason that, now the time has come to redeem
it, she should do so at leisure and after thought. Since she gave her
promise, Monsieur, she has had more than one opportunity of evading its
fulfilment. But she is a Vrillac, and I know that nothing is farther
from her thoughts."
He was silent a moment; and then, "Mademoiselle," he said, "I would not
hurry you."
Her eyes were closed, but at that her lips moved. "I am--willing," she
whispered. And a fluttering sigh, of relief, of pity, of God knows what,
filled the room.
"You are satisfied, M. La Tribe?"
"I do not--"
"Man!" With a growl as of a tiger, Count Hannibal dropped the mask. In
two strides he was at the minister's side, his hand gripped his shoulder;
his face, flushed with passion, glared into his. "Will you play with
lives?" he hissed. "If you do not value your own, have you no thought of
others? Of these? Look and count! Have you no bowels? If she will
save them, will not you?"
"My own I do not value."
"Curse your own!" Tavannes cried in furious scorn. And he shook the
other to and fro. "Who thought of your life? Will you doom these? Will
you give them to the butcher?"
"My lord," La Tribe answered, shaken in spite of himself, "if she be
willing--"
"She is willing."
"I have nought to say. But I caught her words indistinctly. And without
her consent--"
"She shall speak more plainly. Mademoiselle--"