"Content?" Andrew said, looking up at him. "Content with what--failure?"
"Have you failed?"
"Ay, from first to last. See! Reflect! My brother lies in his grave unavenged--to-morrow she will lie in hers. Both victims to that man. And--he--is free."
"Free! Free! He is ruined, beggared, bankrupt in honour, too. His career is ended--he can never rejoin the army nor serve France again--even though you should spare him, he should not draw sword again for my country. I would prevent it. Would myself tell the King. Also he must fly Lorraine; they, his own countrymen, will never let him obtain another denier from his land. He must be an outcast--proscribed--a vagabond on the face of the earth. Will that not suffice?"
"No," Andrew said, bending across the table to look into the young man's eyes. "No, Valentin Debrasques, it cannot suffice. If it could--for your sake--I would be content. But--my brother is unavenged, Marion Wyatt is unavenged--De Bois-Vallée and Andrew Vause are alive. The feud ends when one or both are dead. Not before."
"He said to her--to Clemence," whispered Debrasques, "that you were implacable."
"He said true. In such a cause, Valentin, I am implacable. Listen to me, deem me pagan, bloodthirsty--what you will--but understand me. I was a vaurien from my boyhood, always in trouble, doing ever the wrong thing--yet never losing the love of two creatures on this earth. My mother--and Philip. Because of that, because when I was a man, a soldier--a bravo, some called me!--because of their love for me, because the door of our old home stood open always when I turned my wandering steps that way; because, too, there was never aught of reproach but only words of love and welcome for greeting--sweeter to the ears of him who has been homeless for weeks and months together than to any other!--I loved, I worshipped those two."
He paused a moment--and, to the younger man gazing up at him, it seemed as if the firm, strong soldier was overmastered by an emotion such as none could have ever dreamt would sway him--then went on.
"Loved, worshipped them. Became at last, through that love, I think, a better, more thoughtful man. Grew careful of my reputation, did naught that should bring discredit to them, to the old name I bore. Do you wonder, therefore, that, when I saw my brother lowered to his grave--knowing well what had driven him to it--I took the vow I did, swore that the man who was the primary cause of all should himself find his grave at my hands?"
"I do not wonder," Valentin Debrasques replied softly--"I understand."