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"Stab now, Fortunio!" The captain asked nothing better. He raised his weary sword-arm and brought his point to the level of Garnache's breast, but in that instant its weight became leaden. Imitating the Marquise, Valerie had been in time. She seized Fortunio's half-lifted arm and flung all her weight upon it.
The movement went near to costing him his life. The light no longer falling so pitilessly upon Fortunio's eyes, the captain saw more clearly than hitherto, and shot a swift, deadly stroke straight at the region of Garnache's heart.
Tenacious as a leech, madame; and like a leech come hither to do a little work of purification." Her eyes, now kindling again as she recovered from her recent fears, sought Fortunio's shifty glance. Garnache followed it and read what was in her mind. "What Fortunio has done," said he, "he has done by your son's authority and sanction."
He heard, but for the moment, absorbed as he was in his own musings, he overlooked the fact that it was the name to which he answered at Condillac. Not until it was repeated more loudly, and imperatively, did he turn to see Fortunio beckoning him. With a sudden dread anxiety, he stepped to the captain's side. Was he discovered? But Fortunio's words set his doubts to rest at once.
It took the fellow just above the Adam's apple, and with a horrid, gurgling cry he sank, stretched as he still was in the attitude of that murderous lunge that had proved fatal only to himself. Garnache had come on guard again upon the instant. Yet in the briefest of seconds during which his sword had been about its work of death, Fortunio's rapier came at him a second time.
And so he waited, his pulses throbbing, his breath coming short and fast. The cold water that had invigorated him some minutes ago was numbing him now, and seemed to be freezing his courage as it froze the blood in his veins, the very marrow in his bones. Presently his ears caught a rush of feet, a sound of voices, and Fortunio's raised above the others.
By Fortunio's orders it was opened, and a man covered with dust, astride a weary, foam-flecked horse, rode under the archway of the keep into the first courtyard of the chateau. Garnache eyed him in surprise and inquiry, and he read in the man's appearance that he was a courier.
And on that they might have parted there and then, but that there happened in that moment a commotion at the gate. Men hurried from the guardhouse, and Fortunio's voice sounded loud in command. A horseman had galloped up to Condillac, walked his horse across the bridge which was raised only at night and was knocking with the butt of his whip an imperative summons upon the timbers of the gate.
Suddenly Garnache saw an opening; Fortunio's eyes, caught by the Dowager's movements, strayed for a moment past his opponent, and the thing would have been fatal to the captain but that in that moment, as Garnache was on the point of lunging, he felt himself caught from behind, his arms pinioned to his sides by a pair of slender ones that twined themselves about him, and over his shoulder, the breath of it fanning his hot cheek, came a vicious voice
Angered in his turn, Fortunio inclined his head to his companion's ear, issuing an order. In obedience to it, it was the bravo now who advanced and engaged Garnache. Suddenly he dropped on to his knees, and over his head Garnache found his blade suddenly opposed by Fortunio's. It was a clever trick, and it all but did Garnache's business then.
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