“Pooh! small danger of that. You may draw the charge if you will. For him to know that I possess the weapon will protect me. You do not grasp my plan?”
He shook his head gloomily, as though it was all a deep puzzle to his mind, yet his great hand held forth the pistol, the short barrel of which gleamed wickedly in the fire glow, as I thrust it out of sight.
“’Tis not the way I front enemies,” he growled stubbornly, “and I make little of it. Mon Dieu! I make them talk with these hands.”
“But my weapons are those of a woman,” I explained, “and I will learn more than you would with your brute strength. All I ask of you now, Uncle Chevet, is that you keep on friendly terms with Monsieur Cassion, yet repeat nothing to him of what I have said, and gain me opportunity for speech alone with Sieur de Artigny.”
“Ah! perhaps I perceive––you love the young man?”
I grasped his sleeve in my fingers, determined to make this point at least clear to his understanding. 124 His blunt words had set my pulses throbbing, yet it was resentment, indignation, I felt in strongest measure.
“Mother of God, no! I have spoken with him but three times since we were children. He is merely a friend to be trusted, and he must be made to know my purpose. It will be joy to him to thus affront Cassion, for there is no love lost between them. You understand now?”
He growled something indistinctly in his beard, which I interpreted as assent, but I watched his great form disappear in the direction of the fire, my own mind far from satisfied; the man was so lacking in brains as to be a poor ally, and so obstinate of nature as to make it doubtful if he would long conform to my leadership. Still it was surely better to confide in him to the extent I had than permit him to rage about blindly, and in open hostility to Cassion.
I seated myself just within the tent, my eyes on the scene as revealed in the fire-glow, and reflected again over the details of my hastily born plan. The possibility of the Commissaire’s return did not greatly trouble me, my confidence fortified by the pistol concealed in my waist. No doubt he was already asleep yonder in the shadows, but this night was only the beginning. The opposition he had met would prove a spur to endeavor, and the desire to win me a stronger 125 incentive than ever. He may have been indifferent, careless before––deeming me easy prey––but from now on I meant to lead him a merry chase.
I cannot recall any feeling of regret, any conception of evil, as my mind settled upon this course of action. There was no reason why I should spare him. He had deliberately lied, and deceived me. His marriage to me was an act of treachery; the only intent to rob me of my just inheritance. There seemed to me no other way left in which I could hope to overcome his power. I was a woman, and must fight with the weapons of my sex; mine was the strength of the weak.