Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/334

322 she shook back the hood of her cloak that he might look into her eyes. “You owe me no blow to-day. You have paid me, Monsieur. You have struck me already, and foully, like a coward. Do you remember,” she continued rapidly, “the hour after our marriage, and what you said to me? Do you remember what you told me? And whom to trust and whom to suspect, where lay our interest and where our foes’? You trusted me then! What have I done that you now dare—ay, dare, Monsieur,” she repeated fearlessly, her face pale and her eyes glittering with excitement, “to insult me? That you treat me as—Javette? That you deem me capable of that? Of luring you into a trap, and in my own house, or the house that was mine, of”

“Treating me as I have treated others.”

“You have said it!” she cried. She could not herself understand why his distrust had wounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him was gone. “You have said it, and put that between us which will not be removed. I could have forgiven blows,” she continued, breathless in her excitement, “so you had thought me what I am. But now you will do well to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For were you there, and raised your hand against me—not that that touches me, but it will do—and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the tower at my word.”

“Indeed?”

“Ay, indeed! And indeed, Monsieur!”

Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.

“And this is your new tone, Madame, is it?” he said, slowly and after a pregnant pause. “The crossing of a river has wrought so great a change in you?”

“No!” she cried.

“Yes,” he said. And, despite herself, she flinched before the grimness of his tone. “You have yet to learn one