"Tiens! Honour! Was it honour that brought you into my house to-night?"
"No—but not dishonour."
"Well, there is no time for arguing. I suppose you are not bound in honour to this wild-goose chase of your uncle's—or his friends'?"
"I don't know," Angelot said; and indeed he did not, but he knew that César d'Ombré looked upon him as an addition to his troubles, and had only accepted his company to please Monsieur Joseph.
And now the same power that had dragged Angelot out of his way to Lancilly was holding him fast, heart and brain, and was saying to him, "You cannot go"; the strongest power in the world. He was trembling from head to foot with a wilder, stranger madness than any he had ever known; the great decisive hour of his life was upon him, and he felt it, hard as it was to realise or understand anything in those dark, confused moments.
What wonderful words had Hervé de Sainfoy said? by what way had he brought him, and set him clear of the château? he hardly knew. He found himself out in the dark on the south, the village side; he had to skirt round the backs of the houses and then slip up the river bank till he came to the bridge between the long rows of whispering, rustling poplars. After that a short cut across the fields, where he knew every bush and every rabbit hole, brought him up under the shadow of the church at La Marinière.
The Curé lived with his old housekeeper in a low white house above the church, on the way to the manor. She was always asleep early; but the old man, being very studious and too nervous to sleep much, often sat up reading till long after midnight. Angelot therefore counted on finding a light in his window, and was not disappointed. He cut his old friend's eager welcome very short.
"Monsieur le Curé, come with me at once to the château, if you please. Monsieur de Sainfoy wishes to see you."
"At this hour of the night! What can he want with me? I understood the whole world was dancing."
"So it is—but he wants you, he wants you. Quick, where is your hat?"