As she had once drunk feverishly of the wine standing on the inn table, while it seemed that to the man who ought, even then, to have been her husband his doom was approaching from St. Georges's avenging sword, so she now went to a cabinet and took from it a flask of strong waters and swallowed a dram. The habit had grown on her of late, had often been resorted to since the night when she—hitherto a woman with no worse failings than that of lightness of manner and with, for her greatest weakness, a mad, infatuated passion for Raoul de Roquemaure—had struck her knife deep between his shoulders, and had become a murderess in heart and almost one in actual fact.
Then, having swallowed the liquor, she mused again.
"What best to do? I can not slay him here in my own house—though I would do so if I could compass it. He called me 'wanton'; read me aright! For that alone I would do it! Yet, how? How? And if he goes free from here 'tis not a dozen leagues to Louis; doubtless he knows now his history, he will see him—Louvois is dead and gone to his master, the devil—he is a free man."
Yet as she said the words "a free man" she started, almost gasped.
"A free man!" she repeated. "A free man! Ha! is he free?"
Through her brain there ran a multitude of fresh thoughts, of recollections. "A free man!" Yet he had been condemned, she knew, to the galleys en perpétuité; there was no freedom, never any pardon for those so sentenced. Once condemned, always condemned; no appeal possible, their rights gone forever, slaves till their day of death; branded, marked, so that forever they bore that about them which sent them back to slavery. If he bore that upon him, he was lost; the galleys still yawned for him—yawned for him so long as Louis did not know that the escaped galérien was the son of his friend of early days.
"I know it all, see it all," she whispered to herself. "The galley was lost, but he was saved—saved to come back to France and ruin us. Yet he bears that about him—must bear it, since all condemned en perpétuité are branded—which, once seen, will send him back to his doom. Let but the préfet see that, or any officer of the garrison or citadel, and the next day he will travel again the road which he has come; go back to Dunkirk or Havre, back to the chiourme and the oar. They will listen to nothing, hear no word or protest, grant no trial. He is mine—mine!" and again she went to the cabinet and drank. "Even though he has found proof of who he is, they will not listen to nor believe him."
One fear only disturbed her frenzy now. That he was the man who had called her "wanton," the man who stood between her lover and his wealth, and consequently between her and that lover, she never doubted. Those features, seen first by the lamp in the parlour of the inn—seen, too, when apparently he lay dying from her murderous stab—were too deeply stamped into her memory to ever be forgotten. And as he lay there, looking like death, so he had looked as he lay in the dust outside Rambouillet. He was the man!—and this was her fear! But was it certain that the galley mark was branded into him, the mark which proclaimed him as one doomed to those galleys forever, that would send him back without appeal, and would make all in authority whom he might endeavour to address turn a deaf ear to him?
She must know that, and at once. She could not rest until she knew that upon his shoulder was the damning evidence.
All was quiet in the house, it was near midnight, the domestics were in their beds by now: she resolved that she would satisfy herself at once. Then, if the brand was there, as it must be, she could arrange her next steps—could send for the commandant of the château, deliver the man into his hands, be not even seen by him. If it was there!