"Ernanton," cried mademoiselle, "you know all my treachery!"
"I know that you would have saved your father," I answered, leaping backward upon the bed, to avoid the secretary's impetuous rush; "and that I have saved him, and that, God willing, we shall soon meet him in Guienne!"
"If he meets you, it will be in hell!" With this, Montignac jumped upon the bed after me, and there was some close dagger play while I turned to back out between the posts at the foot.
At this moment La Chatre gave a loud, jubilant cry, and mademoiselle, looking out of the window, uttered a scream of consternation.
"The troops at last!" shouted La Chatre. "Hold out but another minute,
Montignac!"
So then I had heard aright. Alas, I thought, that the river road to Maury should be so much shorter than the forest road; alas, that the governor's troops should have had time to return ere Blaise had reached the junction of the roads!
"My God, the soldiers have us in a trap!" cried mademoiselle, while I caught Montignac's dagger-point with a bed-curtain, and stepped backward from the bed to the floor.
"And mademoiselle shall be mine!"
As he uttered these words with a fiendish kind of elation, Montignac leaped from the bed after me, releasing his dagger by pulling the curtain from its fastening, while at the same time his sword-point, directed at my neck, rang on my breast-plate.
"You shall not live to see the end of this, monsieur!" I replied, infuriated at his premature glee.