"My God!" the woman muttered, stirred out of herself. "Can this be real? Are you, in truth, so careless of fate?"
"Bah!" He replied. "What you prophesy is child's play--child's talk! The fellow whom you serve," and at the word "serve" she started, "dares no more haul me before the Duke than he dare haul me before the Duke's own master, Louis; the Duke's better in war, Turenne. 'Tis to them the Duke has himself to account. Babe's prattle, I tell you, woman! If I am to perish, it will be here in this house, down that well, by poison in my food or drink, or dagger-thrust through my heart when I lie sleeping. The wheel is an open death for all to see, set up at cross-roads or in market places--such things are not for De Bois-Vallée. Go, give him my service, and say so!"
"You wish me to repeat that?"
"Ay, repeat it. Repeat also this. That, though I lie here with a chain round my leg like an ox at the shambles; though I am here in his topmost garret a prisoner, I shall ere long be free again. I know it--feel it. Tell him, also, that Andrew Vause was never born to die at his hands--but, instead, to slay him--as I will! And, if he dares to come to this garret--fail not to tell him this!--and stand before me within the reach of this chain at my ankle, I will throttle the life out of him as I would out of a savage dog. Will never lose my hold till his tongue is a foot out of his mouth. Begone, and fail not to repeat my words!"
The woman said no more--yet cast one long searching glance at him as though wondering what manner of man this was--then went to the head of the steps, or ladder, leading from below, and brought back still another fresh jug of water and a platter, both of which she had left there on entering.
"Here is food and drink for you," she said. Then added: "There is no poison in it!"
"'Tis well. But, remember what I say. If your master compasses my death 'twill come that way--or in some other equally subtle. Yet it will not pass unknown. His cousin, Debrasques, knows him for the unscrupulous villain he is; knows I have come here. If he recovers, as every chirurgeon who saw him believed he would do, he will denounce this man. Therefore, I care not what he does. Now go."
"Debrasques!" the woman repeated, turning sharply on him. "Valentin Debrasques! He knows you and you know him? You say that?" and he saw that her astonishment was great.
"Ay, he is my friend!"
"Debrasques," she whispered. "Debrasques. And your friend!" Then she muttered to herself, though not so low but that he heard her. "And his enemy; as his kinswoman, Fleurange, was mine. 'Twill come. 'Twill surely come."