De Violaine brushed his hand swiftly across his eyes, thrust his chair back, and rose from it to pace the room, while muttering to himself, "That is done with, put away for ever. Duty alone remains--the duty, the allegiance I have sworn. A soldier's loyalty! No matter what he ordains," and his thoughts flew to far-off Versailles, "no matter how much she persuades him to evil, he is the King and I his soldier. Duty to him--and France! Yet, oh! that he were different."
"As for this fellow," the Governor continued, contemptuously now, "who and what is he? Has he dared to raise his eyes to Radegonde, to dream that he shall ever occupy the place Gabriel held; and does he hope by some low cunning, some base intrigue, to bring her to his hand? Emile Francbois! Emile Francbois! Ha! Have a care! You may have thwarted her, you may have brought this Englishman to the halter, but--there is rope enough in this fortress to hang more than one. A spy deserves no worse fate than a traitor."
He sent for the officer of the guard now, and gave his orders for despatching a handful of cavalry under the command of one officer to one part of the town and a second to another part, and gave instructions that from dusk each should be on the watch for a carriage, containing two ladies and accompanied by a man on horseback, that would be making its way towards the only gate open after sunset. He also gave instructions that if this party was met with it should be conducted to that gate and there detained until he arrived at the conclusion of his rounds.
And so the trap that Francbois had baited was set. No travellers such as he had described would be able to pass out of the city this night. While, so strong was the sense of duty, of loyalty to France, engrafted in the heart of De Violaine--badly as France was treating that class of her subjects to which he belonged--that, even had Madame de Valorme been his sister or his wife, he would not have permitted her to continue her journey--a journey on which she went, as he could very well imagine, with a view to conspiring with France's most powerful enemy, England, as represented in the presence of Marlborough.
Yet it was hard to do!--hard to thwart the woman whom he had loved and lost, the woman he had once dreamed of winning for his wife; and hard, too, to prevent that woman from endeavouring to obtain help for those of his and her own faith now suffering for that faith.
But if he drew his existence from those of that faith, so, too, he drew it from France, and, as one of her soldiers, he had sworn to protect her.
Not even his love for a woman whom he had lost could make him false to that vow.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
When De Violaine gave the order to the young Duc de Guise that the gate was to be opened no more for the night, Francbois, had he been present instead of in the citadel, might well have considered that he had succeeded in his betrayal of the man whom he regarded as his rival in the affections of Sylvia Thorne. For that man was now a prisoner in the hands of France; while the actual fact of his being in Liége by aid of a false passport was one that must in any case tell heavily against him. Also, some other statements--which were not facts--that Francbois was prepared to weave into his denunciation would, beyond all doubt, accomplish his destruction.
That those statements would soon be made none who were present at this time could doubt when, following on the order to have the gate kept fast until daybreak, another was issued by the Governor.