Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/215

Rh “No,” she said.

He looked a question.

“No!” she repeated in a low voice. “If I betray him I will not lie to him! And no other shall pay the price! If I ruin him it shall be between him and me, and no other shall have part in it!”

He shook his head. “I do not know,” he murmured, “what he may do to you!”

“Nor I,” she said proudly. “That will be for him.”

Curious eyes had watched the two as they climbed the hill. For the path ran up the slope to the gap which served for gate, much as the path leads up to the Castle Beautiful in old prints of the Pilgrim’s journey, and Madame St. Lo had marked the first halt and the second, and, noting every gesture, had lost nothing of the interview save the words. But until the two, after pausing a moment, passed out of sight she made no sign. Then she laughed. And as Count Hannibal, at whom the laugh was aimed, did not heed her, she laughed again. And she hummed the line of Ronsard.

Still he would not be roused, and, piqued, she had recourse to words.

“I wonder what you would do,” she said, “if the old lover followed us, and she went off with him!”

“She would not go,” he answered coldly, and without looking up.

“But if he rode off with her?”

“She would come back on her feet!”

Madame St. Lo’s prudence was not proof against that. She had the woman’s inclination to hide a woman’s secret; and she had not intended, when she laughed, to do more than play with the formidable man with whom so few dared to play. Now, stung by his tone and his assurance, she must needs show him that his trustfulness had no base.