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For you must know the place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they had never offered her a chair. The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor.
I and three others followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo." "And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?" "I do so hope and trust, my Lord." He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell upon the room.
But when he made an end she flung a quick glance over her shoulder and my heart leaped for joy. For then I knew she was leaning upon me. "Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?" she said. "No!" he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once, and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge."
How is that?" I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye again. "You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my wife." For some small instant I dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close beside me.
"Aye, that I do. Now here is my lady Madge preaching peace and all manner of patience to me in one breath, and upholding in the next this baronet captain who, though I would have seconded him at a pinch, is but a pattern of his brutal colonel." I put two and two together. "So Falconnet is on terms at Appleby Hundred, is he?" "Oh, surely.
"Then tell me why you sent for Father Matthieu." The light was dim, as I have said, yet I could see the faint flush spread from neck to cheek. "You are not of the Church, Monsieur John. You would not understand if I should tell you." "I think I understand without your telling. You said Sir Francis Falconnet had asked for you." "'Twas you who drove me to say it." "Because I tried to warn you?"
Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of this walking death-mask of the libertine, Sir Francis Falconnet. And if his face were terrifying in repose, 'twas fair demoniac when he laughed. "Ha!" he said, bowing again in a mockery of politeness.
And it was a peaceful entrance that took place some hours later, and was watched from the windows of the prior's rooms by Eustacie, her child, and Philip, whom she had been able to install in her own apartments, which had been vacated by the refugee women in haste to return home, and where he now sat in Maitre Gardon's great straw chair, wrapped in his loose gown, and looking out at the northern gates, thrown open to receive the King and Duke, old Falconnet presenting the keys to the Duke, the Duke bowing low as he offered them to the King, and the King waving them back to the Duke and the Captain.
"But you say you have heard, as well?" "Yes." "How?" "Don't ask me, Jack." I said I had no right to ask more than he chose to tell; and at this he blurted out an oath and let me have the sharp-edged truth. "Falconnet has an ally whose wit is shrewder than his. Can you guess who it is?" "No." "'Tis this same Madge Stair you have been defending, Jack," he said, bitterly.
So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep the scale from tipping all were as one to him, or to the Francis Falconnet I knew. And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love would have no word to say.
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