“It is impossible—it is an infamous lie!” exclaimed Condé, and there arose a buzz of astonishment and amaze. I stood transfixed, shaking in every limb, my coward heart almost dead within me.
“Look at him!” repeated Achon, and then a figure ran out from the group behind the Princess, and Yvonne de Mailly, her eyes blazing, her voice shrill, stood before me.
“Say it is a lie!” she said; “say it is a lie!”
There are things the mind feels, and knows to be true, instinctively. I lifted my head and looked into the girl’s hot eyes, and read there, in that moment, what, had I not been a blind fool, I might have known a year before. And she, she as she met my gaze, saw too, and it was something that paled her to the lips, something that made her cower and shrink back from me. Her woman’s heart had told her what I was, and with a smothered cry she threw her arms up, and burst into peal after peal of mirthless laughter.
CHAPTER XXII
“NOTRE HOMME EST CROQUÉ”
When an overwhelming disaster befalls one, when the whole ship of one’s life founders hopelessly, it is perhaps decreed in mercy that the full horror of the thing cannot be realized at the moment it happens. Little by little it breaks in upon the understanding, and it is only when the mind gains strength to endure, that it has the power to realize.
At least so it was with me. I can only judge from myself, and I have but a dim and vague recollection of those minutes, which were to me the most terrible of my life. There was a sound as of the sea roaring in my ears. The room seemed to enlarge to infinite space, and the crowd multiply itself to countless thousands, all watching me, and in the long vista of faces there was but one look on each and every countenance, an unutterable scorn, an unspeakable contempt. My strength was shrivelled to nothing, my courage gone to the four winds. Above all, a voice of agony ringing through a storm, came those peals of pitiful, mad laughter. God grant I may never hear the like again! Every second of that horror stretched to a year. I turned a hunted, appealing eye from face to face, but a mist seemed to gather before me, until at last I caught Achon’s glance, and the malign fire in it, the mocking sneer in his look, shook the weight from my soul. I sprang at him, but he was quick and stepped back, though with a blue scar on his face where my hand had touched him. Then those surrounding us flung themselves on me, and there was a quick, fierce struggle, for I fought like a mad thing. They bore me down by the force of numbers; but still as I struggled, and a sword was pointed to thrust me through, I heard a woman’s voice cry: “In mercy spare him!” But it was not that appeal that gave me my life, and saved me from the death I sought. It was Achon himself who stayed the trooper’s hand.
“Bear him out and bind him securely,” he said; and then, as he looked down upon me, his thin fingers at the mark on his cheek, and the cruel snarl of a cat on his lips, he added: “We have not done with you yet, monsieur—you must be paid your price in full.”
Some shred of dignity still remained with me. I made no answer to the man, struggled no more, but rose sullenly without a word, and let them drag me into the open. There one loosed the reins from a horse, and they bound me with them like a thief, my hands behind my back. With two men guarding me, I stood thus in view of all, while the others were brought out, and the troop formed around them. Perhaps in pity for me, they did not look; but the very sight of those whom I had betrayed brought an agony on me, and I strained at the thongs at my wrists.
“Unbind me,” I said hoarsely through blue lips. “I will not attempt escape; I pledge my honor.”