Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/196

184 her. “I have seen M. de Tignonville,” he said. “And M. le Comte says truly. He is in the same case with ourselves, a prisoner.”

“You have seen him?” she wailed.

“I left him in the room below, when I mounted the stairs.”

Count Hannibal laughed, the grim mocking laugh which seemed to revel in the pain it inflicted.

“Will you have him for a witness?” he cried. “There could not be a better, for he will not forget. Shall I fetch him?”

She bowed her head, shivering. “Spare me that,” she said. And she pressed her hands to her eyes while an uncontrollable shudder passed over her frame. Then she stepped forward: “I am ready,” she whispered. “Do with me as you will!”

When they had all gone out and closed the door behind them, and the two whom the minister had joined were left together, Count Hannibal continued for a time to pace the room, his hands clasped at his back, and his head sunk somewhat on his chest. His thoughts appeared to run in a new channel, and one, strange to say, widely diverted from his bride and from that which he had just done. For he did not look her way, or, for a time, speak to her. He stood once to snuff a candle, doing it with an absent face: and once to look, but still absently, and as if he read no word of it, at the marriage writing which lay, the ink still wet, upon the table. After each of these interruptions he resumed his steady pacing to and fro, to and fro, nor did his eye wander once in the direction of her chair.

And she waited. The conflict of emotions, the strife between hope and fear, the final defeat had stunned her; had left her exhausted, almost apathetic. Yet not quite, nor wholly. For when in his walk he came a little nearer