For five minutes, perhaps, the Comte de Brencourt sat there with a set face waiting for this to happen; then, as no one emerged from the inner room, his fretted nerves drew him to his feet and sent him out in search of the Abbé.
He found him standing motionless under the moon and stars just outside the farmyard—not far, to be exact, from the pigsties, as would have been obvious to anyone less absorbed. The Comte strode over to the cassocked figure.
“May I ask what you meant by that remark you made just now?” he demanded without preliminary.
The Abbé drew himself up. “It is no good talking to me in that tone, Monsieur de Brencourt,” he returned with spirit. “I am neither a gentleman nor a layman, so I can’t go out with you to the Moulin-aux-Fées.”
“Certainly no one would ever take you for a gentleman,” responded the Comte, his voice shaking with passion, “and it takes a priest indeed to play the part you have played—a spying hedge-priest——”
“Which is worse, Monsieur le Comte, spying or lying?”
“Lying!” ejaculated the Comte with vehemence. “Don’t your books of moral theology tell you that keeping quiet about a thing is as bad as lying about it? Why was it more my business to tell the Duc de Trélan that his wife is alive than yours, as you evidently knew it?”
“Dear me,” said M. Chassin, and he smiled. “I was referring to something quite different—to the occasion on which, in so many words, you told Mme Vidal that her husband was dead—no tacit lie that! I think you are rather betraying yourself, are you not, by referring to yet another?”
“Oh, go to the devil!” burst out M. de Brencourt.
“I wish I knew where you were to go, Monsieur le Comte,” was the priest’s answer. “No, seriously, I do not wish to quarrel with you—even after the part you have played. The situation that you have brought about is much too grave for that. You must know that you have done a thing which God may forgive but which man will find it hard to. Listen to me, Monsieur de Brencourt, I beg of you, before it is too late, and remove yourself from the Clos-aux-Grives, from M. de Kersaint’s command even——”