Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/234

222 “I have your word,” she repeated. And now she looked him bravely in the face, her eyes full of the courage of her race.

The lines of his mouth hardened as he met her look. “And what have I of yours?” he said in a low voice. “What have I of yours?”

Her face began to burn at that, her eyes fell and she faltered.

“My gratitude,” she murmured, with an upward look that prayed for pity. “God knows, Monsieur, you have that!”

“God knows I do not want it!” he answered. And he laughed derisively. “Your gratitude!” And he mocked her tone rudely and coarsely. “Your gratitude!” Then for a minute—for so long a time that she began to wonder and to quake—he was silent. At last, “A fig for your gratitude,” he said. “I want your love! I suppose—cold as you are, and a Huguenot—you can love like other women!”

It was the first, the very first time he had used the word to her; and though it fell from his lips like a threat, though he used it as a man presents a pistol, she flushed anew from throat to brow. But she did not quail.

“It is not mine to give,” she said.

“It is his?”

“Yes, Monsieur,” she answered, wondering at her courage, at her audacity, her madness. “It is his.”

“And it cannot be mine—at any time?”

She shook her head, trembling.

“Never?” And, suddenly reaching forward, he gripped her wrist in an iron grasp. There was passion in his tone. His eyes burned her.

Whether it was that set her on another track, or pure despair, or the cry in her ears of little children and of helpless women, something in a moment inspired her,