"Urbaine Ducaire."
"Ducaire?" he repeated, "Ducaire? There is no name such as that in the lists of our unhappy brethren. Mademoiselle, was your father of our religion?"
"I know not," the girl replied, while in her manner, in her eyes, too, was the haughty indifference to her captor which had surprised Cavalier from the first. "I know not. Yet, since he was M. de Baville's friend, it scarce seems possible he should have been."
"Listen," cried the Camisard chief, addressing all those who stood around, "listen, my brethren. Among you are many no longer young, many who can cast their memories back to the years ere this--this demoiselle--could have been born. Some, too, who come from far and wide, from where the waters of the sea lap our southern shores; from where, also, Guienne on one side, Dauphiné on the other, touch our border. Heard ever any of you of a Huguenot named Ducaire?" and as he spoke he cast his eyes around all within the cavern.
But there came no affirmative answer. Only the repetition of that name and the shaking of heads, and glances from eyes to eyes as each looked interrogatively at the other.
"There must be some who, at least, have heard this name if--if La Grande Marie divines truly--if this lady is in truth of our faith. Yet--yet--the gift may have failed her now, have misled her."
"Test that gift, Cavalier," La Grande Marie exclaimed from where she stood now among the others, and speaking in a clear voice, while her filmy eyes, which seemed ordinarily to be peering into far-off space, rested on him. "Test that gift. The woman is not the only one named as being of our faith. Ask of the man."
As she spoke the eyes of Urbaine and Martin met, the minds of each filled with the same thought. The knowledge that whereas hitherto to have declared himself of their captors' faith would have led to his being set free and no longer able to share her doom, his doing so now would almost beyond all doubt prevent that doom from falling on her.
The acknowledgment that La Grande Marie had divined justly in his case would cause them to believe that she had also done so in Urbaine's.
And knowing this--as she too, he felt, must know it--he did not hesitate.