They all passed into the library, discussing. Outside, the March night grew gradually quiet of clamour and torches, as the waiting peasants slowly made their way, for shelter rather than for sleep, to kitchen, stable, or outhouse.
When, a couple of hours later, the three leading peasants went out again to the rest, Louis, left alone with Château-Foix in the hall, stood a moment looking irresolutely at his back as he stopped to take down a pair of pistols from the wall. Then he went up to him. “Gilbert——” he began almost timidly.
The Marquis, though he must have heard, took no notice, but finished disentangling the pistols. Then he wheeled suddenly round. Seen in a better light his face appeared very drawn. “Oh, is that you?” he observed coldly. “Do you want to know anything?”
In a flash Louis had adopted another method of address. “Yes, several things, if I am to be of any use as your lieutenant,” he replied, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Where can I see you for a few moments?”
It was just evident that Gilbert welcomed his change of front. “Come to me in the library in an hour’s time,” he said, slipping the pistols into his pockets. “And I should advise you to put together a few clothes as well as your arms.”
Louis nodded and swung on his heel. It would be many a long day before Gilbert could bear a word on that subject. Well, he did not marvel at it.
Meanwhile Gilbert went to his own room, changed his wet clothes, wrote a brief note to Lucienne, and came down to the library, where a servant had set food and wine. In a business-like manner he despatched these, and then, pulling down a sheaf of maps from a shelf, selected one and spread it out on the table. He was bending over it when the door opened, and in came, not Louis but M. des Graves. The Marquis instantly shifted the shade of the lamp, which he had tilted up in his own direction.
“I am looking out the best route to Les Herbiers, Father,” he remarked. “I believe it would really be shorter to go by Saint-Martin.”
The priest took no notice, but came round the table to his side. “Because we may neither of us be alive at this time to-morrow, Gilbert,” he said very solemnly, “it is my duty to say to you, however much you shrink from the subject, that I am sure you have done right, and that I believe God will bless your sacrifice. . . . And now I shall not refer to the matter again until the day when you shall come to me of your own will and tell me that all is well with you.”
Gilbert, who had not removed his gaze from the map over which he bent, now stood up and looked at the priest. “I fear that day will never come, Father,” he returned in polite and chilling tones. “But I rejoice that you are convinced I have acted rightly. And it is done, and there is an end of it, and, as you say, we will bury the subject. Perhaps you would kindly give Louis a hint that I do not desire to be thanked . . . as though I had given him a horse or paid his debts for him,” he added to himself.