“Enough of that,” he answered with cold fierceness. “The lady saw the folly of it all, before she had done with the world. You—you, monsieur! It was but the pity of her gentle heart, of a romantic nature. You—you blundering alien, spy, and seducer!”
With a gasp of anger I struck him in the face, and whipped out my sword. But the officers near came instantly between us, and I could see that they thought me gross, ill-mannered, and wild, to do this thing before the General’s tent, and to an envoy.
Doltaire stood still a moment. Then presently wiped a little blood from his mouth, and said:
“Messieurs, Captain Moray’s anger was justified; and for the blow he will justify that in some happier time—for me. He said that I had lied, and I proved him wrong. I called him a spy and a seducer—he sought to shame, he covered with sorrow, one of the noblest families of New France—and he has yet to prove me wrong. As envoy I may not fight him now, but I may tell you that I have every cue to send him to hell one day. He will do me the credit to say that it is not cowardice that stays me.”
“If no coward in the way of fighting, coward in all other things,” I retorted instantly.
“Well, well, as you may think.” He turned to go. “We will meet there, then?” he said, pointing to the town. “And when?”
“To-morrow,” said I.
He shrugged his shoulder as to a boyish petulance, for he thought it an idle boast. “To-morrow? Then come and pray with me in the cathedral, and after that we will cast up accounts—to-morrow,” he said, with a poignant and exultant malice. A moment afterwards he was gone, and I was left alone.
Presently I saw a boat shoot out from the shore below, and he was in it. Seeing me, he waved a hand in an ironical way. I paced up and down, sick and distracted, for half an hour or more. I knew not whether he lied concerning Alixe, but my heart was wrung with misery, for indeed he spoke with an air of truth.
Dead! dead! dead! “In no fear of your batteries now,” he had said. “Done with the world!” he had said. What else could it mean? Yet the more I thought, there came a feeling that somehow I had been tricked. “Done with the world!” Ay, a nunnery—was that it? But then, “In no fear of your batteries now”—that, what did that mean but death?