"And her answer?" asked Andrew. "Yet--what need the question! I know it." And to himself he muttered, "thank God, she was true to Philip. Even though he is in his grave, thank God for that," while, even as he so thought, another reflection ran swiftly through his mind.
"Perhaps--perhaps," he pondered, "he knows all now. Perhaps!"
"What more to tell!" Clemente went on, standing still before those two, controlling herself as best she could--mastering, as it seemed to Andrew, some terrible agony that racked her soul. "What more? You came here, entered his house as none have ever entered it before, your life hung on a thread a dozen times; you know not how nearly it was taken as you lay stretched in that hall ere you were carried to the garret--how nearly again--by--but no matter! And in your coming I saw her chance, recognized that you who feared nothing might open the way to freedom for that poor, injured lamb--show her the road back to him she loves. Alas! 'twas not to be."
"Alas!" also said Andrew, "it never could have been. He whom she loved had gone before her."
"Dead!" Clemente said, staring at him. "He is dead? Her lover--your brother?"
"Yes, dead."
"Did she know it?" the woman asked, almost hissed, as she bent forward and touched his arm, "did she know it--and die cursing him?"
"Nay, nay, she died cursing none--left the world with peace in her heart, upon her lips, believing that they would soon meet again now. As they will--as they have done," and he turned his face away from her and Debrasques so that they might not see his grief.
Later that night, when Andrew and the Marquis sat once more together in front of the fire, and while Clemence still watched above in the room where the dead girl lay--she was to be buried in the morning in a remote portion of the abbey grounds, the noble ladies of Remiremont having permitted that, in spite of her not being of their faith--the Marquis spoke to him and said:
"Is the feud ended now, Captain Vause, the task accomplished? Are you content?"