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Yet it was a reflection that he readily dismissed from his mind. In such a pass as he now found himself none but a weakling could waste time and energy in bewailing the circumstances that had conspired to it. In a man of La Boulaye's calibre and mettle it was more befitting to seek a means to neutralise as much as possible the evil done.
A shadow crossed her face, which remained otherwise calm and composed the beautiful, intrepid face that had more than once been La Boulaye's undoing. "I am glad that you have waited, Monsieur. In so doing you need have no doubts concerning me. M. d'Ombreval is my betrothed, and the troth I plighted him binds me in honour to succour him now." La Boulaye looked steadily at her for a moment.
Already the trees had hidden the Marquis and his daughter from La Boulaye's sight. The young revolutionist felt weary and lonely dear God, how lonely! neither kith nor kin had he, and of late all the interest of his life saving always that absorbed by Jean Jacques had lain in watching Suzanne de Bellecour, and in loving her silently and distantly.
I will perhaps see her again later, when the Captain shall have recovered consciousness. You, Citoyenne Capoulade, assist me to carry him to bed." Each obeyed him, Guyot readily, as became a soldier, and the hostess trembling with the dread which La Boulaye's words had instilled into her.
"It stings you, does it" she cried, whilst the Marquis, from angered that at first he had been, now burst into a laugh at her fury and at this turning of tables upon the executioner. She made shift to pursue the fellow to his place of refuge, but coming of a sudden upon the ghastly sight presented by La Boulaye's lacerated back, she drew back in horror.
An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye's courage. An instant ago he had felt a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that same audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face anger of the quality that has its source in shame. In a second he was on his feet before her, towering to the full of his lean height.
He had an opportunity while Brutus was helping him into his coat to whisper in the fellow's ear: "Let her know." More he dared not say, but to his astute official that was enough, and with a sorrowful face he delivered to Suzanne, a few hours later, the news of La Boulaye's definite arrest and removal to the Luxembourg.
"Then, name of a name, how came that lumbering coach to leave the yard without awakening you?" "You ask me to explain too much," was La Boulaye's cool evasion. "I have always accounted myself a light sleeper, and I could not have believed that such a thing could really have taken place without disturbing me.
Varennes listened gravely, and cross-questioned her in his unbelief for it seemed, indeed, monstrous that a man of La Boulaye's position should ruin so promising a future as was his by an act for which Varennes could not so much as divine a motive.
"What would you do?" cried the old man fearfully, setting a restraining hand upon La Boulaye's sleeve. But Caron shook himself free. "This," was all he answered, and simultaneously, he levelled his pistol and fired at Blaise. Shot through the head, the servant collapsed forward; then, as the horse reared and started off at a gallop, he toppled sideways and fell.
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