She anticipated him. She had risen, and stood looking straight before
her, seeing nothing.
"I am willing," she muttered with a strange gesture, "if it must be."
He did not answer.
"If it must be," she repeated slowly, and with a heavy sigh. And her
chin dropped on her breast. Then, abruptly, suddenly--it was a strange
thing to see--she looked up. A change as complete as the change which
had come over Count Hannibal a minute before came over her. She sprang
to his side; she clutched his arm and devoured his face with her eyes.
"You are not deceiving me?" she cried. "You have Tignonville below?
You--oh, no, no!" And she fell back from him, her eyes distended, her
voice grown suddenly shrill and defiant, "You have not! You are
deceiving me! He has escaped, and you have lied to me!"
"I?"
"Yes, you have lied to me!" It was the last fierce flicker of hope when
hope seemed dead: the last clutch of the drowning at the straw that
floated before the eyes.
He laughed harshly. "You will be my wife in five minutes," he said, "and
you give me the lie? A week, and you will know me better! A month,
and--but we will talk of that another time. For the present," he
continued, turning to La Tribe, "do you, sir, tell her that the gentleman
is below. Perhaps she will believe you. For you know him."
La Tribe looked at her sorrowfully; his heart bled for her. "I have seen
M. de Tignonville," he said. "And M. le Comte says truly. He is in the
same case with ourselves, a prisoner."
"You have seen him?" she wailed.
"I left him in the room below, when I mounted the stairs."
Count Hannibal laughed, the grim mocking laugh which seemed to revel in
the pain it inflicted.
"Will you have him for a witness?" he cried. "There could not be a
better, for he will not forget. Shall I fetch him?"
She bowed her head, shivering. "Spare me that," she said. And she
pressed her hands to her eyes while an uncontrollable shudder passed over
her frame. Then she stepped forward: "I am ready," she whispered. "Do
with me as you will!"
* * * * *
When they had all gone out and closed the door behind them, and the two
whom the minister had joined were left together, Count Hannibal continued
for a time to pace the room, his hands clasped at his back, and his head
sunk somewhat on his chest. His thoughts appeared to run in a new
channel, and one, strange to say, widely diverted from his bride and from
that which he had just done. For he did not look her way, or, for a
time, speak to her. He stood once to snuff a candle, doing it with an
absent face: and once to look, but still absently, and as if he read no
word of it, at the marriage writing which lay, the ink still wet, upon
the table. After each of these interruptions he resumed his steady
pacing to and fro, to and fro, nor did his eye wander once in the
direction of her chair.