And he stretched out his hand to grasp the musket, still believing that this was merely a drunken boor who was feeling quarrelsome and who could easily be scared away.
"If you touch that musket, Monsieur le Marquis," said the man at the door quietly, "I fire."
Then only did de Trévargan, in his turn, look steadily at him. As in a flash, remembrance came to him. He recognised that pale, colourless face, those deep-set grey eyes which once before—at the Château de Trévargan—had probed his very soul and wrested from him the secret of Darnier's assassination.
"That accursed police agent!" he muttered between his teeth. "A moi, Blue-Heart. Let him fire and be damned to him!"
But even Blue-Heart and White-Beak, those desperate and reckless Chouans, who were always prepared to take any and every risk, and who counted life more cheaply than they did the toss of a coin, paused, awestruck, ere they obeyed; for the Man in Grey, with one of those swift and sudden movements which were peculiar to him, had taken one step forward, seized Constance de Plélan by the wrist, dragged her to him against the door, and was even now holding the pistol to her side.
"One movement from any of you," he said with the same icy calm; "one word, one step, one gesture, and by the living God, I swear that I will kill her before your eyes!"
Absolute, death-like silence ensued. M. de Trévargan and the four Chouans stood there, paralysed and rigid. To say that they did not stir, that they did not breathe one word or utter as much as a sigh, would but ill express the complete stillness which fell upon them, as if some hidden and awful petrifying hand had suddenly turned them into stone. Constance de Plélan had not stirred either. She also stood, motionless as a statue, her hand held firmly in a steel-like grasp, the muzzle of the pistol against her breast. Fearlessly, almost defiantly, she gazed straight into the eyes of this man who had so reverently worshipped her and whom she had so nearly learned to love.
"From my soul," he whispered, so low that even she could scarcely hear, "I crave your pardon. From my soul I worship you still. But I would not love you half so dearly, Constance, did I not love my Emperor and France more dearly still."
"You coward!" came after a moment or two of tense suspense, from the parched lips of M. de Trévargan. "Would you seize upon a woman——?"
"The Emperor's life or hers," broke in the Man in Grey coldly. "You give me no other choice. What I do, I do, and am answerable for my actions to God alone. So down on your knees every one of you!" he added firmly. "Now! At once! Another movement, another word, and I fire!"