He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into his brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve, and that they were in sympathy. And Tavannes, seeing them talking together, and noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed the same opinion, and retired more darkly into himself. The downfall of his plan for dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond compare, a plan dependent on the submission of Angers--his disappointment in this might have roused the worst pa.s.sions of a better man. But there was in this man a pride on a level at least with his other pa.s.sions: and to bear himself in this hour of defeat and flight so that if she could not love him she must admire him, checked in a strange degree the current of his rage.

When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the rear. On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, Monsieur, _en avant_!" and sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour, Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his heart.

Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot!--for ever, it seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they had long seen before them, a cl.u.s.ter of houses and a church appeared; and Badelon, drawing rein, cried--

"Beaupreau, Madame! We stay an hour!"

It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles, while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought, and hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour pa.s.sed rapidly, and when it had pa.s.sed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when he gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But Badelon said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced.

Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly. When they at last unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson, they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.

CHAPTER x.x.xII. THE ORDEAL BY STEEL.

The women for the most part fell like sacks and slept where they alighted, dead weary. The men, when they had cared for the horses, followed the example; for Badelon would suffer no fire. In less than half an hour, a sentry who stood on guard at the edge of the wood, and Tignonville and La Tribe, who talked in low voices with their backs against a tree, were the only persons who remained awake, with the exception of the Countess. Carlat had made a couch for her, and screened it with cloaks from the wind and the eye; for the moon had risen and where the trees stood spa.r.s.est its light flooded the soil with pools of white. But Madame had not yet retired to her bed. The two men, whose voices reached her, saw her from time to time moving restlessly to and fro between the road and the little encampment. Presently she came and stood over them.

"He led His people out of the wilderness," La Tribe was saying; "out of the trouble of Paris, out of the trouble of Angers, and always, always southward. If you do not in this, Monsieur, see His finger--"

"And Angers?" Tignonville struck in, with a faint sneer. "Has He led that out of trouble? A day or two ago you would risk all to save it, my friend. Now, with your back safely turned on it, you think all for the best."

"We did our best," the minister answered humbly. "From the day we met in Paris we have been but instruments."

"To save Angers?"

"To save a remnant."

On a sudden the Countess raised her hand. "Do you not hear horses, Monsieur?" she cried. She had been listening to the noises of the night, and had paid little heed to what the two were saying.

"One of ours moved," Tignonville answered listlessly. "Why do you not lie down, Madame?"

Instead of answering, "Whither is he going?" she asked. "Do you know?"

"I wish I did know," the young man answered peevishly. "To Niort, it may be. Or presently he will double back and recross the Loire."

"He would have gone by Cholet to Niort," La Tribe said. "The direction is rather that of Roch.e.l.le. G.o.d grant we be bound thither!"

"Or to Vrillac," the Countess cried, clasping her hands in the darkness.

"Can it be to Vrillac he is going?"

The minister shook his head.

"Ah, let it be to Vrillac!" she cried, a thrill in her voice. "We should be safe there. And he would be safe."

"Safe?" echoed a fourth and deeper voice. And out of the darkness beside them loomed a tall figure.

The minister looked and leapt to his feet. Tignonville rose more slowly.

The voice was Tavannes'. "And where am I to be safe?" he repeated slowly, a faint ring of saturnine amus.e.m.e.nt in his tone.

"At Vrillac!" she cried. "In my house, Monsieur!"

He was silent a moment. Then, "Your house, Madame? In which direction is it, from here?"

"Westwards," she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with eagerness and emotion and hope. "Westwards, Monsieur--on the sea. The causeway from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten hundred."

"Westwards? And how far westwards?"

Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness, the same anxiety, which spoke in hers. Nor was Count Hannibal's ear deaf to it.

"Through Challans," he said, "thirteen leagues."

"From Clisson?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Comte."

"And by Commequiers less," the Countess cried.

"No, it is a worse road," Tignonville answered quickly; "and longer in time."

"But we came--"

"At our leisure, Madame. The road is by Challans, if we wish to be there quickly."

"Ah!" Count Hannibal said. In the darkness it was impossible to see his face or mark how he took it. "But being there, I have few men."

"I have forty will come at call," she cried with pride. "A word to them, and in four hours or a little more--"

"They would outnumber mine by four to one," Count Hannibal answered coldly, dryly, in a voice like ice-water flung in their faces. "Thank you, Madame; I understand. To Vrillac is no long ride; but we will not ride it at present." And he turned sharply on his heel and strode from them.

He had not covered thirty paces before she overtook him in the middle of a broad patch of moonlight, and touched his arm. He wheeled swiftly, his hand halfway to his hilt. Then he saw who it was.

"Ah," he said, "I had forgotten, Madame. You have come--"

"No!" she cried pa.s.sionately; and standing before him she shook back the hood of her cloak that he might look into her eyes. "You owe me no blow to-day. You have paid me, Monsieur. You have struck me already, and foully, like a coward. Do you remember," she continued rapidly, "the hour after our marriage, and what you said to me? Do you remember what you told me? And whom to trust and whom to suspect, where lay our interest and where our foes'? You trusted me then! What have I done that you now dare--ay, dare, Monsieur," she repeated fearlessly, her face pale and her eyes glittering with excitement, "to insult me? That you treat me as--Javette? That you deem me capable of _that_? Of luring you into a trap, and in my own house, or the house that was mine, of--"

"Treating me as I have treated others."

"You have said it!" she cried. She could not herself understand why his distrust had wounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him was gone. "You have said it, and put that between us which will not be removed. I could have forgiven blows," she continued, breathless in her excitement, "so you had thought me what I am. But now you will do well to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For were you there, and raised your hand against me--not that that touches me, but it will do--and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the tower at my word."

"Indeed?"

"Ay, indeed! And indeed, Monsieur!"

Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.

"And this is your new tone, Madame, is it?" he said, slowly and after a pregnant pause. "The crossing of a river has wrought so great a change in you?"