“Say something, Vibrac!” she exclaimed. “Tell me you have forgiven an erring woman, who has caused you all this pain. Say, you will try and do what I ask, and forget me!”
I turned from her, and walked slowly across the ride, my head held down, my hands clenched in an agony. All that was good in me rose and clamored for her pleading. The strength that had come to her seemed to bring strength to me, and when I faced her again I was victor over myself.
“Let it be as you wish,” I said hoarsely. “Good-by!”
“Good-by!” And our hands met. And then womanlike she spoke again.
“Monsieur! You must never see me again. But I will hear of you, and let me hear you are still, what I have always heard and known you to be—a brave and noble gentleman.”
Bowing low I touched her hand with my lips, and then releasing it, stepped aside and lifted my hat.
“Good-by!” she said again softly, and turning, passed swiftly and silently, like a ghost, up the long avenue. Once she stopped, where the moonlight shone brightly, and looked back, and then she was gone.
Near me lay the mouldering trunk of a fallen tree. I sat down there and stared stupidly before me. Something of the resolve, something of the unspoken promise I had made to her, came to me to give me strength. Yes, I would forget her. I would carry with me into my new life no memory of her. I slipped my hand in my breast pocket for the letters and the glove—to destroy them. They were gone, and with them the scroll of names. In my horror at the loss I sprang to my feet, and searched around me; but with no avail; and then, the parting words of the Capuchin came to me, and for the first time I grasped their full meaning. I had indeed done the Queen-Mother and the tyrants of Guise a service, when I left my coat by the side of the spy—for a spy he must have been—and he had the letters, and the scroll with the list of names.
Cursing my folly a hundred times as I reflected how useless it would be to try and find the man now, I hurried back to Badehorn, and half an hour later had left Paris forever.
And so came the parting of the ways. Full of resolve to conquer the past, I flung myself heart and soul into the great enterprise that ended in disaster at Amboise. By strange fortune, I served again with Marcilly, and strove to efface by my loyalty and zeal the memory of the wrong I would have done him. Then I heard that husband and wife were reconciled, though she still remained at Orleans with the Court, and the thought that she had hopelessly passed out of my life maddened and tortured me beyond endurance. I began slowly to fall back into my former state. I began to absolutely hate Marcilly as the man who had taken away from me my only chance of happiness, and after that I was ready to yield to temptation.