“La Boulaye?” echoed the Marquise. Then, in a frenzy of terror: “There are the pistols there, Suzanne,” she cried. “You can shoot. Kill him! Kill him!”
The girl's lips came tightly together until her mouth seemed no more than a straight line. Her cheeks grew white as death, but her eyes were brave and resolute. She put forth her hand and seized one of the pistols as the carriage with a final jolt came to a standstill.
An instant later the door was dragged open, and La Boulaye stood bowing in the rain with mock ceremoniousness and a very contemptuous smile on his stern mouth. He had dismounted, and flung the reins of his horse over the bough of a tree by the roadside. The Marquise shuddered at sight of him, and sought to shrink farther back into the cushions of the carriage.
“Citoyenne,” he was saying, very bitterly, “when I made my compact with you yesternight, I did not reckon upon being compelled to ride after you in this fashion. I have some knowledge of the ways of your people, of their full words and empty deeds; but you I was fool enough to trust. By experience we learn. I must ask you to alight, Citoyenne.”
“To what purpose, Monsieur?” she asked, in a voice which she strove to render cold and steady.
“To the purpose that your part of the bargain be carried out. Your mother and your treasure were to find their way into Prussia upon condition that you return with me to France.”
“It was a bargain of coercion, Monsieur,” she answered attempting to brazen it out. “I was a woman in a desperate situation.”
“Surely your memory is at fault, Citoyenne,” he answered, with a politeness that was in itself a mockery.
“Your situation was so little desperate that I had offered to effect the rescue both of your mother and yourself without asking any guerdon. Your miserable treasure alone it was that had to be sacrificed. You will recall that the bargain was of your own proposing.”
There was a pause, during which he stood waiting for her reply. Her blue eyes made an attempt to meet his steady gaze, but failed. Her bosom rose and fell in the intensity of her agitation.