You remember the Sibylline books? How often they were offered, and the terms? It is not too late, Messer Blondel—even now. While there is life there is hope, there is more than hope. There is certainty."
"Is there?" Blondel cried; he extended a lean hand, shaking with vindictive passion. "Is there? Go and look in your casket, fool! Go and look in your steel box!" he hissed. "Go! And see if it be not too late!"
For a moment Basterga peered at him, his brow contracted, his eyes screwed up. The blow was unexpected. Then, "Have you taken the stuff?" he muttered.
"I? No! But she has!" And on that, seeing the change in the other's face—for, for once, the scholar's mask slipped and suffered his consternation to appear—Blondel laughed triumphantly: in torture himself, he revelled in a disaster that touched another. "She has! She has!"
"She? Who?"
"The girl of the house! Anne you call her! Curse her! child of perdition, as she is! She!" And he clawed the air.
"She has taken it?" Basterga spoke incredulously, but his brow was damp, his cheeks were a shade more sallow than usual; he did not deceive the other's penetration. "Impossible!" he continued, striving to rally his forces. "Why should she take it? She has no illness, no disease! Try"—he swallowed something—"to be clear, man. Try to be clear. Who has told you this cock-and-bull story?"
"It is the truth."
"She has taken it?"
"To give to her mother—yes."