Thus in intimate talk did they while away the time of waiting, and in the hour that sped they came, perhaps, to know more of each other than they had done hitherto. Intimate, indeed, had they unconsciously become already. Their singular position, locked together in that tower—a position utterly impossible under any but the conditions that attended it—had conduced to that good-fellowship, whilst the girl's trust and dependence upon the man, the man's observance of that trust, and his determination to show her that it had not been misplaced, had done the rest.
But to-night they seemed to have drawn nearer in spirit to each other, and that, maybe, it was that prompted Valerie to sigh, and in her sweet, unthinking innocence to say again:
"I am truly sorry, Monsieur de Garnache, that our sojourn here is coming to an end."
He was no coxcomb, and he set no false value on the words. He laughed for answer, as he rejoined:
"Not so am I, mademoiselle. Nor shall I know peace of mind again until this ill-omened chateau is a good three leagues or so behind us. Sh! What was that?"
He came instantly to his feet, his face intent and serious. He had been sitting at his ease in an armchair, over the back of which he had tossed the baldric from which his sword depended. The clang of the heavy door below, striking the wall as it was pushed open, had reached his ears.
"Can it be time already?" asked mademoiselle; yet a panic took her, and she blenched a little.
He shook his head.
"Impossible," said he; "it is not more than ten o'clock. Unless that fool Arsenio has blundered—" He stopped. "Sh!" he whispered. "Some one is coming here."
And suddenly he realized the peril that might lie in being found thus in her company. It alarmed him more than did the visit itself, so unusual at this hour. He saw that he had not time to reach the guard-room; he would be caught in the act of coming forth, and that might be interpreted by the Dowager or her son—if it should happen to be one or the other of them—as a hurried act of flight such as guilt might prompt. Perhaps he exaggerated the risk; but their fortunes at Condillac had reached a point where they must not be jeopardized by any chance however slight.
"To your chamber, mademoiselle," he whispered fearfully, and he pointed to the door of the inner room. "Lock yourself in. Quick! Sh!" And he signed frantically to her to go silently.
Swift and quietly as a mouse she glided from the room and softly closed the door of her chamber and turned the key in a lock, which Garnache had had the foresight to keep well oiled. He breathed more freely when it was done.
A step sounded in the guard-room. He sank without a rustle into the chair from which he had risen, rested his head against the back of it, closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and dissembled sleep.
The steps came swiftly across the guard-room floor, soft, as of one lightly shod; and Garnache wondered was it the mother or the son, just as he wondered what this ill-come visitor might be seeking.
The door of the antechamber was pushed gently open it had stood ajar—and under the lintel appeared the slender figure of Marius, still in his brown velvet suit as Garnache last had seen him. He paused a moment to peer into the chamber. Then he stepped forward, frowning to behold "Battista" so cosily ensconced.
"Ola there!" he cried, and kicked the sentry's outstretched legs, the more speedily to wake him. "Is this the watch you keep?"
Garnache opened his eyes and stared a second dully at the disturber of his feigned slumbers. Then, as if being more fully awakened he recognized his master, he heaved himself suddenly to his feet and bowed.
"Is this the watch you keep?" quoth Marius again, and Garnache, scanning the youth's face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache's mind, but his face maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and, with a wave of the hands towards the inner chamber,
"La damigella a la," said he.
For all that Marius had no Italian he understood the drift of the words, assisted as they were by the man's expressive gesture. He sneered cruelly.
"It would be an ugly thing for you, my ugly friend, if she were not," he answered. "Away with you. I shall call you when I need you." And he pointed to the door.
Garnache experienced some dismay, some fear even. He plied his wits, and he determined that he had best seem to apprehend from his gestures Marius's meaning; but apprehend it in part only, and go no further than the other side of that door.
He bowed, therefore, for the third time, and with another of his foolish grins he shuffled out of the chamber, pulling the door after him, so that Marius should not see how near at hand he stayed.
Marius, without further heeding him, stepped to mademoiselle's door and rapped on a panel with brisk knuckles.
"Who is there?" she inquired from within.
"It is I—Marius. Open, I have something I must say to you."
"Will it not keep till morning?"
"I shall be gone by then," he answered impatiently, "and much depends upon my seeing you ere I go. So open. Come!"
There followed a pause, and Garnache in the outer room set his teeth and prayed she might not anger Marius. He must be handled skillfully, lest their flight should be frustrated at the last moment. He prayed, too, that there might be no need for his intervention. That would indeed be the end of all—a shipwreck within sight of harbour. He promised himself that he would not lightly intervene. For the rest this news of Marius's intended departure filled him with a desire to know something of the journey on which he was bound:
Slowly mademoiselle's door opened. White and timid she appeared.
"What do you want, Marius?"
"Now and always and above all things the sight of you, Valerie," said he, and the flushed cheek, the glittering eye, and wine-laden breath were as plain to her as they had been to Garnache, and they filled her with a deeper terror. Nevertheless she came forth at his bidding.
"I see that you were not yet abed," said he. "It is as well. We must have a talk." He set a chair for her and begged her to be seated; then he perched himself on the table, his hands gripping the edges of it on either side of him, and he turned his eyes upon her.
"Valerie," he said slowly, "the Marquis de Condillac, my brother, is at La Rochette."
"He is coming home!" she cried, clasping her hands and feigning surprise in word and glance.
Marius shook his head and smiled grimly.
"No," said he. "He is not coming home. That is—not unless you wish it."
"Not unless I wish it? But naturally I wish it!"
"Then, Valerie, if you would have what you wish, so must I. If Florimond is ever to come to Condillac again, you must be my wife."
He leaned towards her now, supported by his elbow, so that his face was close to hers, a deeper flush upon it, a brighter glitter in his black eyes, his vinous breath enveloping and suffocating her. She shrank back, her hands locking themselves one in the other till the knuckles showed white.
"What—what is it you mean?" she faltered.
"No more than I have said; no less. If you love him well enough to sacrifice yourself," and his lips curled sardonically at the word, "then marry me and save him from his doom."
"What doom?" Her voice came mechanically, her lips seeming scarce to move.
He swung down from the table and stood before her.
"I will tell you," he said, in a voice very full of promise. "I love you, Valerie, above all else on earth or, I think, in heaven; and I'll not yield you to him. Say 'No' to me now, and at daybreak I start for La Rochette to win you from him at point of sword."