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No doubt she could tell us where he was lodged, and so rid our task of half its difficulty. Could anything have fallen out more happily? "You know then M. Louis de Pavannes?" I continued eagerly. "Certainly," she answered, smiling with a rare shy sweetness this time. "Very well indeed. He is my husband." "He is my husband!"
Her companionship with that vile priest, her strange eagerness to secure Pavannes' return, her mysterious directions to me, her anxiety to take her sister home home, where she would be exposed to danger, as being in a known Huguenot's house these things pointed to but one conclusion; still that one was so horrible that I would not, even while I doubted and distrusted her, I would not, I could not accept it.
I opened it a hand's breadth and listened. All was quiet below; the house still. I took the key out of the lock and put it in my pocket and went back. Marie and Croisette were standing a little apart from Madame de Pavannes, who, hanging over her sister, was by turns bathing her face and explaining our presence. In a very few minutes Madame d'O seemed to recover, and sat up.
Slowly; not in its full completeness indeed until I heard Louis in broken phrases, phrases half proud and half humble, thanking him for his generosity. Even then I almost lost the true and wondrous meaning of the thing when I heard his answer. For he cut Pavannes short with bitter caustic gibes, spurned his proffered gratitude with insults, and replied to his acknowledgments with threats.
M. de Pavannes' the other M. de Pavannes' suspicions had been well founded. Worse than Bezers was she? Ay! worse a hundred times. As much worse as treachery ever is than violence; as the pitiless fraud of the serpent is baser than the rage of the wolf.
It was Louis himself: our Louis de Pavannes, But he was changed indeed from the gay cavalier I remembered, and whom I had last seen riding down the street at Caylus, smiling back at us, and waving his adieux to his mistress! Beside the Vidame he had the air of being slight, even short. The face which I had known so bright and winning, was now white and set.
That is the story in brief." "That woman sent you to fetch me?" he repeated again. "Yes," I answered angrily. "She did, M. de Pavannes." "Then," he said slowly, and with an air of solemn conviction which could not but impress me, "there is a trap laid for me! She is the worst, the most wicked, the vilest of women! If she sent you, this is a trap! And my wife has fallen into it already!
I began to wonder as minutes passed by the gay company we had seen putting it in my mind, I suppose whether M. de Pavannes, of Paris, might not turn out to be a very different person from Louis de Pavannes, of Caylus; whether the king's courtier would be as friendly as Kit's lover.
Low-bred trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with him, when he said firmly: "She shall not go!" "I say she shall!" the priest shrieked, losing all control over himself. "Fool! Madman! You know not what you do!"
She has a character, M. le Vidame. But if she prefer to stay here well!" "Oh, she has a character, has she?" rejoined the giant, his eyes twinkling with evil mirth, "and she should go home with you, and my old friend Madame d'O, to save it! That is it, is it? No, no," he continued when he had had his silent laugh out, "Madame de Pavannes will do very well here very well here until morning.
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