M. de St. Alais, who followed me, and had kept silence throughout, thanked him also. Then M. le Marquis stood hesitating on the threshold, while I looked to see him hurry away. At last he turned to me. "M. de Saux," he said, speaking with less aplomb than was usual with him--but we were all agitated--"I should thank you also. But perhaps the situation in which we stand towards one another----"
"I think nothing of that," I answered harshly. "But that in which we have just stood----"
"Ah," he rejoined, shrugging his shoulders, "if you take it that way----"
"I do take it that way," I answered--the Captain's blood was not yet dry on the man's sword, and he spoke to me! "I do take it that way. And I warn you, M. le Marquis," I continued sternly, "that if you pursue your plan further, a plan that has already cost one brave man his life, it will recoil on yourselves, and that most terribly."
"At least I shall not ask you to shield me," he answered proudly. And he walked carelessly away, sheathing his sword as he went. The passage was still empty. There was no one to stop him.
Louis followed him; Du Marc and the surgeon had already disappeared. I fancied that as Louis passed me he hung a moment on his heel; and that he would have spoken to me, would have caught my eye, would have taken my hand, had I given him an opening. But I saw before me Hugues' dead face and sunken eyes, and I set my own face like a stone, and turned away.
CHAPTER XIII.
[A LA LANTERNE.]
For, of all the things that had happened since I left the Committee Room, the Captain's death remained the one most real and most deeply bitten into my mind. He had shared with me the walk from the inn to the garden, and the petty annoyances that had then filled my thoughts. He had faced them with me, and bravely; and this late association, and the picture of him as he walked beside me, full of life and coarse wrath, rose up now and cried out against his death; cried out that it was impossible. So that it seemed horrible to me, and I shook with fear, and loathed the man whose hand had done it.
Nor was that all. I had known Hugues barely forty-eight hours, my liking for him was only an hour born; but I had his story. I could follow him going about to borrow the small sum of money he had possessed. I could trace the hopes he had built on it. I could see him coming here full of honest courage, believing that he had found an opening; a man strong, confident, looking forward, full of plans. And then of all, this was the end! He had hoped, he had purposed; and on the other side of the Cathedral, he lay stark--stark and dead on the grass.