After the last monk had disappeared, she still remained there, expectantly; and when she saw that neither the carriage nor the grooms made their appearance, she stepped up to Fortunio to inquire into the reason of it.
"Surely Monsieur de Condillac rides in that coach," said she.
"Surely," Fortunio answered, himself looking puzzled. "I will go seek the reason, madame. Meanwhile will you receive the Abbot? The monks will have deposited their burden."
She composed her features into a fitting solemnity, and passed briskly through to the hall, Tressan ever at her heels. Here she found the coffin deposited on the table, its great black pall of velvet, silver-edged, sweeping down to the floor. No fire had been lighted that morning nor had the sun yet reached the windows, so that the place wore a chill and gloomy air that was perhaps well attuned to the purpose that it was being made to serve.
With a rare dignity, her head held high, she swept down the length of that noble chamber towards the Abbot, who stood erect as a pikestaff: at the tablehead, awaiting her. And well was it for him that he was a man of austere habit of mind, else might her majestic, incomparable beauty have softened his heart and melted the harshness of his purpose.
He raised his hand when she was within a sword's length of him, and with startling words, delivered in ringing tones, he broke the ponderous silence.
"Wretched woman," he denounced her, "your sins have found you out. Justice is to be done, and your neck shall be bent despite your stubborn pride. Derider of priests, despoiler of purity, mocker of Holy Church, your impious reign is at an end."
Tressan fell back aghast, his face blenching to the lips; for if justice was at hand for her, as the Abbot said, then was justice at hand for him as well. Where had their plans miscarried? What flaw was there that hitherto she had not perceived? Thus he questioned himself in his sudden panic.
But the Marquise was no sharer in his tremors. Her eyes opened a trifle wider; a faint colour crept into her cheeks; but her only emotions were of amazement and indignation. Was he mad, this shaveling monk? That was the question that leapt into her mind, the very question with which she coldly answered his outburst.
"For madness only," she thought fit to add, "could excuse such rash temerity as yours."
"Not madness, madame," he answered, with chill haughtiness—"not madness, but righteous indignation. You have defied the power of Holy Church as you have defied the power of our sovereign lady, and justice is upon you. We are here to present the reckoning, and see its payment made in full."
She fancied he alluded to the body in the coffin—the body of her stepson—and she could have laughed at his foolish conclusions that she must account Florimond's death an act of justice upon her for her impiety. But her rising anger left her no room for laughter.
"I thought, sir priest, you were come to bury the dead. But it rather seems you are come to talk."
He looked at her long and sternly. Then he shook his head, and the faintest shadow of a smile haunted his ascetic face.
"Not to talk, madame; oh, not to talk," he answered slowly. "But to act, I have come, madame, to liberate from this shambles the gentle lamb you hold here prisoned."
At that some of the colour left her cheeks; her eyes grew startled: at last she began to realize that all was not as she had thought—as she had been given to understand.—Still, she sought to hector it, from very instinct.
"Vertudieu!" she thundered at him. "What mean you?"
Behind her Tressan's great plump knees were knocking one against the other. Fool that he had been to come to Condillac that day, and to be trapped thus in her company, a partner in her guilt. This proud Abbot who stood there uttering denunciations had some power behind him, else had he never dared to raise his voice in Condillac within call of desperate men who would give little thought to the sacredness, of his office.
"What mean you?" she repeated—adding with a sinister smile, "in your zeal, Sir Abbot, you are forgetting that my men are within call."
"So, madame, are mine," was his astounding answer, and he waved a hand towards the array of monks, all standing with bowed heads and folded arms.
At that her laughter rang shrill through the chamber. "These poor shavelings?" she questioned.
"Just these poor shavelings, madame," he answered, and he raised his hand again and made a sign. And then an odd thing happened, and it struck a real terror into the heart of the Marquise and heightened that which was already afflicting her fat lover, Tressan.
The monks drew themselves erect. It was as if a sudden gust of wind had swept through their ranks and set them all in motion. Cowls fell back and habits were swept aside, and where twenty monks had stood, there were standing now a score of nimble, stalwart men in the livery of Condillac, all fully armed, all grinning in enjoyment of her and Tressan's dismay.
One of them turned aside and locked the door of the chamber. But his movement went unheeded by the Dowager, whose beautiful eyes, starting with horror, were now back upon the grim figure of the Abbot, marvelling almost to see no transformation wrought in him.
"Treachery!" she breathed, in an awful voice, that was no louder than a whisper, and again her eyes travelled round the company, and suddenly they fastened upon Fortunio, standing six paces from her to the right, pulling thoughtfully at his mustachios, and manifesting no surprise at what had taken place.
In a sudden, blind choler, she swept round, plucked the dagger from Tressan's belt and flung herself upon the treacherous captain. He had betrayed her in some way; he had delivered up Condillac—into whose power she had yet had no time to think. She caught him by the throat with a hand of such nervous strength as one would little have suspected from its white and delicate contour. Her dagger was poised in the air, and the captain, taken thus suddenly, was palsied with amazement and could raise no hand to defend himself from the blow impending.
But the Abbot stepped suddenly to her side and caught her wrist in his thin, transparent hand.
"Forbear," he bade her. "The man is but a tool."
She fell back—dragged back almost by the Abbot—panting with rage and grief; and then she noticed that during the moment that her back had been turned the pall had been swept from the coffin. The sight of the bare deal box arrested her attention, and for the moment turned aside her anger. What fresh surprise did they prepare her?
No sooner had she asked herself the question than herself she answered it, and an icy hand seemed to close about her heart. It was Marius who was dead. They had lied to her. Marius's was the body they had borne to Condillac—those men in the livery of her stepson.
With a sudden sob in her throat she took a step towards the coffin. She must see for herself. One way or the other she must at once dispel this torturing doubt. But ere she had taken three paces, she stood arrested again, her hands jerked suddenly to the height of her breast, her lips parting to let out a scream of terror. For the coffin-lid had slowly raised and clattered over. And as if to pile terror for her, a figure rose from the box, and, sitting up, looked round with a grim smile; and the figure was the figure of a man whom she knew to be dead, a man who had died by her contriving—it was the figure of Garnache. It was Garnache as he had been on the occasion of his first coming to Condillac, as he had been on the day they had sought his life in this very room. How well she knew that great hooked nose and the bright, steely blue eyes, the dark brown hair, ash-coloured at the temples where age had paled it, and the fierce, reddish mustachios, bristling above the firm mouth and long, square chin.