Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/213

Rh “Therefore he trusts you,” was the unyielding, the pitiless answer. “You, and you alone, have the opportunity of doing this.”

She gazed at him in astonishment. “And it is you who say that?” she faltered, after a pause. “You who made us one, who now bid me betray him, whom I have sworn to love? To ruin him whom I have sworn to honour?”

“I do!” he answered solemnly. “On my head be the guilt, and on yours the merit.”

“Nay, but—” she cried quickly, and her eyes glittered with passion—“do you take both guilt and merit! You are a man,” she continued, her words coming quickly in her excitement, “he is but a man! Why do you not call him aside, trick him apart on some pretence or other, and when there are but you two, man to man, wrench the warrant from him? Staking your life against his, with all those lives for prize? And save them or perish? Why I, even I, a woman, could find it in my heart to do that, were he not my husband! Surely you, you who are a man, and young”

“Am no match for him in strength or arms,” the minister answered sadly. “Else would I do it! Else would I stake my life, Heaven knows, as gladly to save their lives as I sit down to meat! But I should fail, and if I failed all were lost. Moreover,” he continued solemnly, “I am certified that this task has been set for you. It was not for nothing, Madame, nor to save one poor household that you were joined to this man; but to ransom all these lives and this great city. To be the Judith of our faith, the saviour of Angers, the”

“Fool! Fool!” she cried. “Will you be silent?” And she stamped the turf passionately, while her eyes blazed in her white face. “I am no Judith, and no madwoman as you are fain to make me. Mad?” she continued, overwhelmed with agitation, “My God, I would