“Radegonde!” she murmured again.
“Ah, mademoiselle! What are two rows of teeth against a hundred. Send her away, I implore you, and accept my escort out of this danger.”
“My faith!” she said at last, in a queer little moving voice, “it may be as the citizen says; but I think dogs are safer than men.”
I urged my prayer. The beauty and courage of the child filled my heart with a sort of rapturous despair.
“God witness I am speaking for your safety alone! Will this prevail with you? I am the Comte de la Muette. I exchange you that confidence for a little that you may place in me. I lay my life in your hands, and I beg the charge of yours in return.”
I could hear her breathing deep where she stood. Suddenly she bent and spoke to her companion.
“To the secret place, Radegonde—and to-morrow again for thy confiture, thou bad glutton. Kiss thy Nanette, my baby; and, oh, Radegonde! not what falls from the table of Sainte Guillotine!”
She stood erect, and held up a solemn finger. The hound slunk away, like a human thing ashamed; showed her teeth at me as she passed, and disappeared in the shadows of the scaffold.
I took a hurried step forward. Near at hand the pure loveliness of this citoyenne was, against its surroundings, like a flower floating on blood.
She smiled, and looked me earnestly in the face. We were but phantoms to one another in that moony twilight; but in those fearful times men had learned to adapt their eyesight to the second plague of darkness.