"How can it be my fault?" said the count. "I have nothing to do with the fulfilment of your promise."
"Yes, you have," answered the Marquis of Masseran: "I will give you the means; but if any pitiful scruple, any lady-like hesitation upon your part, prevents you from employing them, the fault is your own."
"Mark me now, my good lord," replied the count: "it was understood between us that I was to have no share in anything contrary to my allegiance to the crown of France. With your own plans I had nothing to do. If you chose to give the agents of the empire an opportunity of making you a prisoner, and taking possession of your fortresses for reasons and with purposes best known to yourself, I had nothing to do with that: that was your own affair; I would be in no degree implicated with it; I would receive no bribes from Savoy or Austria," he continued, with a sneer; "all I agreed to do was to rescue the lady, if, on any occasion, I were informed that she was travelling as a prisoner between Fort Covert and Brianzone. This I promised to do, and I should have had no scruple then to use my opportunities to the best advantage."
The Lord of Masseran smiled with a meaning look, which his companion easily interpreted. The count added with a frown, "You mistake me: I would have done her no wrong, sir! Though I would have taken care to keep her so long with me that she could give her hand to no one else, I would have treated her with all honour."
"Doubtless, doubtless," replied the Lord of Masseran; "but what I mean now, my lord count, is, that if I again, at a great risk to myself, give you good opportunity, you will have no hesitation in using a little gentle force to compel this lady's union with yourself. We have priests enough who will perform the ceremony with a deaf ear to the remonstrances that her reluctance and maiden modesty may suggest; but when we have carried the matter so far as that, remember that my safety, nay, my life itself, may be compromised if you yield to any weak supplications. Once commit ourselves, and our only safety is in her being your wife! Then she will be silent for her own sake."
"By Heavens," said the count, in a deep, low tone, "she shall be my wife if it be but in revenge for the scorn with which she treated me in Paris. If it costs the lives of her and me, and all our kin, she shall be mine, Lord of Masseran."
"So be it, then," replied the marquis; "but, to accomplish my new scheme, I must be absent some few days."
The count gazed upon him somewhat suspiciously. "Some few days?" he said. "What! long enough, marquis, to go to Paris or Vienna?"
"Neither," replied the Marquis of Masseran, coolly. "Three days will suffice, if well used. In three days I will be back again."
"And in those three days," replied the count, "this Bernard de Rohan, whom we were talking about just now, will have fair opportunity of visiting the bright lady, and even, perhaps, by the connivance of her fair mother, may carry her within the French frontier, and plead her father's promise at the court of the king."