The Duc bit his lip. “I am glad you think so,” he replied in an exceedingly cold voice. And from the reply and its manner the priest learnt what he wanted to learn. M. de Brencourt had made no pleasant use of his knowledge.
“If you need anything in the night, or cannot sleep, Gaston, call for me. I shall spend it in your room out there.—Yes, it is necessary. Try not to make calculations about what Mirabel has given you, but get some rest if you can.”
“And if I cannot, what pleasanter subject could I have to think about?” enquired his patient, looking up at him again. The frown was gone. “And for that, as for so much else, I have to thank you, my brother.” He held out his left hand.
“And suppose,” said the Abbé in a low voice, as he took it in both his own, “suppose that I had come back with my news to find you with a bullet in your heart! Gaston, you might have remembered . . . me!”
The hand in his own returned his grip, but the voice said, with fair composure, “Yes, it was foolhardy, that walk. But surely, Pierre, you know that one day or the other you are certain to find me as you say; and you know, too, that if I have finished my task it is what I should desire.”
“Yes,” said Pierre Chassin very gravely. “I do not wish you any better death, when the time comes. But the death you faced to-night was not worthy of you. Perhaps the prayers of . . . of one who lived at Mirabel averted it. And I know you must have been tried beyond endurance. . . . See, I have shaded the candle so; and remember to call me. Good-night, mon frère.”
CHAPTER VI
MEMINI ET PERMANEO
It was soon plain to Gaston de Trélan that, between bodily pain and mental turmoil, sleep was not likely to visit him much that night. He would, at least, keep that fact from Pierre if he could. . . . Poor Pierre! it seemed to be his fate to cause him anxiety! And he owed him so much, more than a man could ever repay: his life—that was little—but what measure of self-respect he had also.
That life he had nearly cast away this evening, and, because of his present position and circumstances, he fully shared the priest’s reprobation of the hazard, but no other course had been possible, for not Pierre himself, who had so quickly penetrated the tale of the “Blue,” could guess the lengths to which he had suffered de Brencourt to go before he consented to fight him. Even to Pierre he was not going to repeat the things the Comte had said. . . .