"Why did he wear his corselet?" she wailed, as if she had not heard him. "Was there no spear could reach his breast, that he must come to this? No foe so gentle he would spare him this? Or why did he not die with me in Paris when we waited? In another minute death might have come and saved us this."
With the tears running down his face he tried to comfort her. "Man that is a shadow," he said, "passeth away--what matter how? A little while, a very little while, and we shall pass!"
"With his curse upon us!" she cried. And, shuddering, she pressed her hands to her eyes to shut out the sight her fancy pictured.
He left her for a while, hoping that in solitude she might regain control of herself. When he returned he found her seated, and outwardly more composed, her arms resting on the parapet-wall, her eyes bent steadily on the long stretch of hard sand which ran northward from the village. By that route her lover had many a time come to her; there she had ridden with him in the early days; and that way they had started for Paris on such a morning and at such an hour as this, with sunshine about them, and larks singing hope above the sand-dunes, and warm wavelets creaming to the horses' hoofs!
Of all which, La Tribe, a stranger, knew nothing. The rapt gaze, the unchanging attitude only confirmed his opinion of the course she would adopt. He was thankful to find her more composed; and in fear of such a scene as had already passed between them he stole away again. He returned by-and-by, but with the greatest reluctance, and only because Carlat's urgency would take no refusal.
He came this time to crave the key of the wicket, explaining that--rather to satisfy his own conscience and the men than with any hope of success--he proposed to go half-way along the causeway, and thence by signs invite a conference. "It is just possible," he added, hesitating--he feared nothing so much as to raise hopes in her--"that by the offer of a money ransom, Madame----"
"Go," she said, without turning her head. "Offer what you please. But"--bitterly--"have a care of them! Montsoreau is very like Montereau! Beware of the bridge!"
He went and came again in half-an-hour. Then, indeed, though she had spoken as if hope was dead in her, she was on her feet at the first sound of his tread on the stairs; her parted lips and her white face questioned him. He shook his head.
"There is a priest," he said in broken tones, "with them, whom God will judge. It is his plan, and he is without mercy or pity."
"You bring nothing from--him?"