“Ah, let it be to Vrillac!” she cried, a thrill in her voice. “We should be safe there. And he would be safe.”
“Safe?” echoed a fourth and deeper voice. And out of the darkness beside them loomed a tall figure.
The minister looked and leapt to his feet. Tignonville rose more slowly.
The voice was Tavannes’. “And where am I to be safe?” he repeated slowly, a faint ring of saturnine amusement in his tone.
“At Vrillac!” she cried. “In my house, Monsieur!”
He was silent a moment. Then, “Your house, Madame? In which direction is it, from here?”
“Westwards,” she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with eagerness and emotion and hope. “Westwards, Monsieur—on the sea. The causeway from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten hundred.”
“Westwards? And how far westwards?”
Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness, the same anxiety, which spoke in hers. Nor was Count Hannibal’s ear deaf to it.
“Through Challans,” he said, “thirteen leagues.”