"Pasquedieu!" he heard the latter say—and started both at the exclamation and the voice—"you may laugh, ma mie, yet I tell you 'tis so. He will marry her, spend her money on other women as I spend mine on you—Morbleu! whom have we here?" and the man riding along the road with his female companion pulled up his own horse, as the woman did hers, on seeing another traveller dismounted by the side of, and examining, his animal.
"Whom?" exclaimed that traveller, looking up—"whom? One perhaps whom you know. One whose name is Georges St. Georges." Then, vaulting back into his saddle—not meaning to be taken at a disadvantage—he bent forward and looked into the newcomer's face. "Did you ever hear that name before, monsieur?" he asked.
The face into which he gazed was that of a young, good-looking man, close shaven and with gray eyes that looked at him, as he thought, with terror. He was well dressed, too, in a riding costume of the period, while the woman who sat her horse, peering at him out of the eyelets of her mask, was also smartly arrayed in a female riding coat of the day, her head covered with a hood.
"Answer, monsieur," said St. Georges.
"Never," the other replied. "How should I know the name of every—person—I meet on the road?"
St. Georges bent forward over his saddle so that his own face was now nearer by a foot to the man with the gray eyes; then he said:
"Monsieur de Roquemaure, you are a liar! And more, a thief, a kidnapper; also, a would-be assassin. I know you and this, your wanton, here. You have to answer to me to-night for all you have done against me and mine in the past two weeks."
"Mon Dieu!" he heard the woman hiss beneath her mask. "Kill him, Raoul, kill him! God! that you should let him live and utter such things!" And as she so hissed she leaned down and struck at his face with her riding whip.
"Hound!" she exclaimed, "you apply that word to me? To me?"
"The woman speaks well," St. Georges said, warding off the blow with his arm while his eye rested on her for a moment; "it is a matter of killing. Either you or I have to be killed. To-night! Do you hear, or are you struck dumb with fear?"