She said it! "You have answered them?" she muttered, her eyes meeting mine.
"No," I said, looking away again. "They have given us a minute to decide, and----"
"I heard them," she answered shivering. "Tell them."
"But, Mademoiselle----"
"Tell them never! Never!" she cried feverishly. "Be quick, or they will think that we are dreaming of it."
Yet I hesitated--while the flames crackled outside. What, after all, was this rascal's life beside hers? What his tainted existence, who all these years had ground the faces of the poor and dishonoured the helpless, beside her youth? It was a dreadful moment, and I hesitated. "Mademoiselle," I muttered at last, avoiding her eyes, "you have not thought, perhaps. But to refuse this offer may be to sacrifice all--and not save him."
"I have thought!" she answered, with a passionate gesture. "I have thought. But he was my father's steward, Monsieur, and he is my brother's; if he has sinned, it was for them. It is for them to pay the penalty. And--after all, it may not come to that," she continued, her face changing, and her eyes seeking mine, full of sudden terror. "They will not dare, I think. They will never dare to----"
"Where is he?" I asked hoarsely.
She pointed to the corner behind her. I looked, and could scarcely believe my eyes. The man whom I had left full of a desperate courage, prepared to sell his life dearly, now crouched a huddled figure in the darkest angle of the tapestry seat. Though I had spoken of him in a low voice, and without naming him, he heard me, and looked up, and showed a face to match his attitude; a face pallid and sweating with fear; a face that, vile at the best and when redeemed by hardihood, looked now the vilest thing on earth. Ciel! that fear should reduce a man to that! He tried to speak as his eyes met mine, but his lips moved inaudibly, and he only crouched lower, the picture of panic and guilt.
I cried out to the others to know what had happened to him. "What is it?" I said.