Despite her fears she could not repress a little smile of scorn.
"Is that all?" said she. "Why, if you are so rash, it is yourself, assuredly, will be slain."
He smiled tranquilly at that reflection upon his courage and his skill.
"So might it befall if I went alone," said he. She understood. Her eyes dilated with horror, with loathing of him. The angry words that sprang to her lips were not to be denied.
"You cur, you cowardly assassin!" she blazed at him. "I might have guessed that in some such cutthroat manner would your vaunt of winning me at the sword-point be accomplished."
She watched the colour fade from his cheeks, and the ugly, livid hue that spread in its room to his very lips. Yet it did not daunt her. She was on her feet, confronting him ere he had time to speak again. Her eyes flashed, and her arm pointed quivering to the door.
"Go!" she bade him, her voice harsh for once. "Out of my sight! Go! Do your worst, so that you leave me. I'll hold no traffic with you."
"Will you not?" said he, through setting teeth, and suddenly he caught the wrist of that outstretched arm. But she saw nothing of immediate danger. The only danger that she knew was the danger that threatened Florimond, and little did that matter since at midnight she was to leave Condillac to reach La Rochette in time to warn her betrothed. The knowledge gave her confidence and an added courage.
"You have offered me your bargain," she told him. "You have named your price and you have heard my refusal. Now go."
"Not yet awhile," said he, in a voice so odiously sweet that Garnache caught his breath.
He drew her towards him. Despite her wild struggles he held her fast against his breast. Do what she would, he rained his hot kisses on her face and hair, till at last, freeing a hand, she smote him with all her might across the face.
He let her go then. He fell back with an oath, a patch of fingermarks showing red on his white countenance.
"That blow has killed Florimond de Condillac," he told her viciously. "He dies at noon to-morrow. Ponder it, my pretty."
"I care not what you do so that you leave me," she answered defiantly, restraining by a brave effort the tears of angry distress that welled up from her stricken heart. And no less stricken, no less angry was Garnache where he listened. It was by an effort that he had restrained himself from bursting in upon them when Marius had seized her. The reflection that were he to do so all would irretrievably be ruined alone had stayed him.
Marius eyed the girl a moment, his face distorted by the rage that was in him.
"By God!" he swore, "if I cannot have your love, I'll give you cause enough to hate me."
"Already have you done that most thoroughly," said she. And Garnache cursed this pertness of hers which was serving to dare him on.
The next moment there broke from her a startled cry. Marius had seized her again and was crushing her frail body in his arms.
"I shall kiss your lips before I go, ma mie," said he, his voice thick now with a passion that was not all of anger. And then, while he still struggled to have his way with her, a pair of arms took him about the waist like hoops of steel.
In his surprise he let her free, and in that moment he was swung back and round and cast a good six paces down the room.
He came to a standstill by the table, at which he clutched to save himself from falling, and turned bewildered, furious eyes upon "Battista," by whom he now dimly realized that he had been assailed.
Garnache's senses had all left him in that moment when Valerie had cried out. He cast discretion to the winds; reason went out of him, and only blind anger remained to drive him into immediate action. And as suddenly as that flood of rage had leaped, as suddenly did it ebb now that he found himself face to face with the outraged Condillac and began to understand the magnitude of the folly he had committed.
Everything was lost now, utterly and irretrievably—lost as a dozen other fine emprises had been by his sudden and ungoverned frenzy. God! What a fool he was! What a cursed, drivelling fool! What, after all, was a kiss or two, compared with all the evil that might now result from his interference? Haply Marius would have taken them and departed, and at midnight they would have been free to go from Condillac.
The future would not have been lacking in opportunities to seek out and kill Marius for that insult.
Why could he not have left the matter to the future? But now, with Florimond to be murdered on the morrow at La Rochette, himself likely to be murdered within the hour at Condillac, Valerie was at their mercy utterly.
Wildly and vainly did he strive even then to cover up the foolish thing that he had done. He bowed apologetically to Marius; he waved his hands and filled the air with Italian phrases, frenziedly uttered, as if by the very vigour of them he sought to drive explanation into his master's brain. Marius watched and listened, but his rage nowise abated; it grew, instead, as if that farrago of a language he did not understand were but an added insult. An oath was all he uttered. Then he swung round and caught Garnache's sword from the chair beside him, where it still rested, and Garnache in that moment cursed the oversight. Whipping the long, keen blade from its sheath, Marius bore down upon the rash meddler.
"Par Dieu!" he swore between his teeth. "We'll see the colour of your dirty blood, you that lay hands upon a gentleman."
But before he could send home the weapon, before Garnache could move to defend himself, Valerie had slipped between them. Marius looked into her white, determined face, and was smitten with surprise. What was this hind to her that she should interfere at the risk of taking the sword herself?
Then a slow smile spread upon his face. He was smarting still under her disdain and resistance, as well as under a certain sense of the discomfiture this fellow had put upon him. He saw a way to hurt her, to abase her pride, and cut her to the very soul with shame.
"You are singularly concerned in this man's life," said he, an odious undercurrent of meaning in his voice.
"I would not have you murder him," she answered, "for doing no more than madame your mother bade him."
"I make no doubt he has proved a very excellent guard," he sneered.
Even now all might have been well. With that insult Marius might consider that he had taken payment for the discomfiture he had suffered. He might have bethought him that, perhaps, as she said, "Battista" had done no more than observe the orders he had received—a trifle excessively, maybe, yet faithfully nevertheless. Thinking thus, he might even have been content to go his ways and take his fill of vengeance by slaying Florimond upon the morrow. But Garnache's rash temper, rising anew, tore that last flimsy chance to shreds.
The insult that mademoiselle might overlook might even not have fully understood—set him afire with indignation for her sake. He forgot his role, forgot even that he had no French.
"Mademoiselle," he cried, and she gasped in her affright at this ruinous indiscretion, "I beg that you will stand aside." His voice was low and threatening, but his words were woefully distinct.
"Par la mort Dieu!" swore Marius, taken utterly aback. "What may your name be—you who hitherto have had no French?"
Almost thrusting mademoiselle aside, Garnache stood out to face him, the flush of hot anger showing through the dye on his cheeks.
"My name," said he, "is Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache, and my business now to make an end of one at least of this obscene brood of Condillac."
And, without more ado, he caught up a chair and held it before him in readiness to receive the other's onslaught.
But Marius hung back an instant—at first in sheer surprise, later in fear. He had some knowledge of the fellow's methods. Even the sword he wielded gave him little confidence opposed to Garnache with a chair. He must have help. His eyes sought the door, measuring the distance. Ere he could reach it Garnache would cut him off. There was nothing for it but to attempt to drive the Parisian back. And so with a sudden rush he advanced to the attack. Garnache fell back and raised his chair, and in that instant mademoiselle once more intervened between them.