Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/195

Rh “My lord,” La Tribe answered, shaken in spite of himself, “if she be willing”

“She is willing.”

“I have nought to say. But I caught her words indistinctly. And without her consent”

“She shall speak more plainly. Mademoiselle”

She anticipated him. She had risen, and stood looking straight before her, seeing nothing.

“I am willing,” she muttered with a strange gesture, “if it must be.”

He did not answer.

“If it must be,” she repeated slowly, and with a heavy sigh. And her chin dropped on her breast. Then, abruptly, suddenly—it was a strange thing to see—she looked up. A change as complete as the change which had come over Count Hannibal a minute before came over her. She sprang to his side; she clutched his arm and devoured his face with her eyes. “You are not deceiving me?” she cried. “You have Tignonville below? You—oh, no, no!” And she fell back from him, her eyes distended, her voice grown suddenly shrill and defiant, “You have not! You are deceiving me! He has escaped, and you have lied to me!”

“I?”

“Yes, you have lied to me!” It was the last fierce flicker of hope when hope seemed dead: the last clutch of the drowning at the straw that floated before the eyes.

He laughed harshly. “You will be my wife in five minutes,” he said, “and you give me the lie? A week, and you will know me better! A month, and—but we will talk of that another time. For the present,” he continued, turning to La Tribe, “do you, sir, tell her that the gentleman is below. Perhaps she will believe you. For you know him.”

La Tribe looked at her sorrowfully; his heart bled for