At the contempt in the scornful voice La Mothe started, flushing hotly in the darkness. But the memory of the deadly deceit practised on his own faith was too recent, and he controlled himself. How could he blame a stranger for judging the servant by the master?
"The ring came from the King and should go back to the King. On your honour, is this part of your duty?"
"My most solemn duty, as God is above us; without the signet I cannot fulfil all that has been laid upon me"—which was true in a sense. The order stolen from Beaufoy might gain him entrance to Valmy, but without the signet he could not count on forcing a way to Louis himself.
"On compulsion, then," said La Mothe, giving up the signet, and thenceforward they rode in silence, not pressing their horses unduly; but it vexed him to think that Louis would not trust him to return the ring.
If Stephen La Mothe was sick at heart, who could blame him or charge it to the discredit of his courage? The rough lesson had been roughly taught that it is better to tramp the road of life afoot and one's own master than to ride a-horseback under compulsion. He had learned, too, that on the tree of knowledge of the ways of men are many fruits which pucker the mouth, as well as those which gladden the spirit. As to the ways of women, that is an altogether different book—a serial, let us say, but in how many numbers?
Of these ways La Mothe learned one before the sun of a new day had risen. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the auberge where Paul Beaufoy had purchased breakfast at a cost greater than an empty purse, the troopers were dismissed after a brief conference, from which La Mothe was excluded, and the two rode on alone. Each was preoccupied and neither spoke. Knowing the relationship which existed between Valmy and Amboise there seemed to La Mothe nothing strange in the procedure followed both at the Château and afterwards. If the King suspected he had joined the camp of the Dauphin, then arrest might have been resisted; but once upon the road, and his parole passed, there was no further need for force. The King who kept no faith was shrewd to know when he could trust the faith of others, and the troopers doubtless were required elsewhere. The truth was they followed at a distance, in order to cover and aid Molembrais' flight in the desperate possibility of his escape from Valmy.
Unconsciously following the precedent set by Commines, they drew rein while it was yet dark. Daylight, both knew, would show Valmy in the distance. But as they crawled at a foot's pace in the yet darker shadow of a dense pine-wood edging the highway, the east a sullen grey ribbed by a narrow cloud poised upon the horizon like an inverted giant monolith, there sounded behind them the remote pad, pad of rapid hoofs muffled by dust. It was the very dead hour of night, when even nature is steeped in the quiet of a child's sleep, and the rhythmic beat broke the stillness like the throbbing of a heart.
"This way and be silent."
La Mothe felt rather than saw his bridle caught, wrenching his horse backward into a gloom so heavy that those behind them would have passed them by but that Grey Roland, chafing at the pressure on the bit, tossed his head and set the cheek-chains jangling. Instantly the foremost rider checked, and a voice called out of the darkness, "Who is there? Stephen! Stephen!" It was Ursula de Vesc. With a touch of the spur La Mothe drove Grey Roland forward, dragging the rein from the hand which held it.
"Ursula! You! Why are you here? Who is with you?"