“I know it, Jeanne. It was excellent of you! Excellent! It is long since you have done such a day’s work.”
“You will not give him up?”
“My faith, I shall!” he answered, affecting, and perhaps really feeling, wonder at her simplicity. “He is five crowns, girl! You do not understand. He is worth five crowns, and the risk nothing at all.”
If he had been angry, or shown anything of the fury of the suspicious husband; if he had been about to do this out of jealousy or revenge, she would have quailed before him, though she had done him no wrong, save the wrong of mercy and pity. But his spirit was too mean for the great passions; he felt only the sordid ones, which to a woman are the most hateful. And instead of quailing, she looked at him with flashing eyes. “I shall warn him,” she said.
“It will not help him,” he answered, sitting still, and feeling the edge of the hatchet with his fingers.
“It will help him,” she retorted. “He shall go. He shall escape before they come.”
“I have locked the doors!”
“Give me the key!” she panted. “Give me the key, I say!” She had risen and was standing before him, her figure drawn to its full height. He rose hastily and retreated behind the table, still retaining the hatchet in his grasp.
“Stand back!” he said, sullenly. “You may awaken him, if you please, my girl. It will not avail him. Do you not understand, fool, that he is worth five crowns? And listen! It is too late now. They are here!”