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The situation in which Count Hannibal left Mademoiselle de Vrillac will be remembered. She had prevailed over him; but in return he had bowed her to the earth, partly by subtle threats, and partly by sheer savagery. He had left her weeping, with the words "Madame de Tavannes" ringing doom in her ears, and the dark phantom of his will pointing onward to an inevitable future.
"He would have gone by Cholet to Niort," La Tribe said. "The direction is rather that of Rochelle. God grant we be bound thither!" "Or to Vrillac," the Countess cried, clasping her hands in the darkness. "Can it be to Vrillac he is going?" The minister shook his head. "Ah, let it be to Vrillac!" she cried, a thrill in her voice. "We should be safe there. And he would be safe."
At last, "I bear a message," the man announced loudly and clearly, "for the lady of Vrillac. Is she present?" "Give your message!" La Tribe replied. "It is for her ears only." "Do you want to enter?" "No!" The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled.
"They must be close upon us!" she murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order. "Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly. "If we knew what had happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, Madame. For that matter, I know what I wish he would do. And our heads are set for it." "What?" "Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes. "For Vrillac?"
"That depends," Count Hannibal replied, after a moment's thought. "On what?" "On Mademoiselle de Vrillac." The other's eyes gleamed with passion. He leaned forward. "What has she to do with it?" he cried. And he stood up and sat down again in a breath. Tavannes raised his eyebrows with a blandness that seemed at odds with his harsh visage.
Had I gone to Mademoiselle de Vrillac last Saturday and said to her 'Marry me, or promise to marry me, what answer would she have given?" "She would have called you an insolent!" the young man replied hotly. "And I " "No matter what you would have done!" Tavannes said. "Suffice it that she would have answered as you suggest. Yet to-day she has given me her promise."
From the quarter of the markets north of him, a quarter which fenced in the cemetery on two sides, the same dull murmur proceeded, which Mademoiselle de Vrillac had remarked an hour earlier.
"Dreadful? Pardieu, not so dreadful," he answered, smiling, and striving to give the dispute a playful turn. "You have seen more in a week than you would have seen at Vrillac in a lifetime, Mademoiselle." "And I choke!" she retorted; "I choke! Do you not see how they look at us, at us Huguenots, in the street? How they, who live here, point at us and curse us?
The tears filled the Countess's eyes as she looked westwards and southwards. "Vrillac is there!" she cried; and she pointed. "I smell the sea!" "Ay!" he answered, almost under his breath. "It lies there! And no more than thirty leagues from us! With fresh horses we might see it in two days!" Badelon's voice broke in on them. "Forward!" he cried, as the party reached the southern bank. "En avant!"
Under the pressure of utmost peril, she passed her word; the more reason that, now the time has come to redeem it, she should do so at leisure and after thought. Since she gave her promise, Monsieur, she has had more than one opportunity of evading its fulfilment. But she is a Vrillac, and I know that nothing is farther from her thoughts."
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