“Are they here? I must see them.”
“They will not see you, Paul. They would curse you and shut their ears. They believe you did it.”
“But you, father, you,” I pleaded, “can undeceive them. Come with me.” And I grasped him vehemently by the arm.
But he shook me off, with a sort of anxious impatience.
“Of course, Paul, I know you did not do it. I know you, as she would, too, if she loved you,” he cried, in a voice made high and thin by excitement. “I will tell them you are true. But—where is Yvonne?” And he pushed past me to the gate, where he paused irresolutely.
“Don’t tell me she is not with you!” I cried.
“She ran out a minute ago, not telling us what she was going to do,” he answered.
“But what for? What made her? She must have had some reason! What was it?” I demanded, becoming cold and stern as I noted how his nerves were shaken.
He collected himself with a visible effort, and then looked at me with a kind of slow pity.
“I had but now come in,” said he, “and thoughtlessly I told Madame a word just caught in the crowd. You know that evil savage, Etienne le Bâtard. Or you don’t, I see; but he’s the red right-hand of La Garne, and it was he executed yonder outrage. As he was leading his cut-throats away in haste, plainly upon another malignant enterprise, I heard him tell one of my parishioners what he would do. The man is suspected of a leaning to the English; and the savage said to him with significance: