It was too late for action tonight. But early tomorrow he would bear to Count Pizzamano the news of this daring French plan to end the war, and leave it to the Count to arouse the Serenissima to the needs of the hour.
Uplifted a little from his earlier despondency, he went off in the dusk to the Casa Gazzola, so that he might escort thence the lady to whom in his thoughts he always alluded derisively as his widow.
She received him with reproaches. 'It is two weeks and more since you came last to see me. Fi donc! Is that the way to treat a friend?'
He made excuses that were condemned as too vague to be sincere.
But in the gondola her mood completely melted, and abruptly she manifested a solicitude that startled him.
'I want you to be on your guard, Marc, with Lallemant, and particularly with a friend of his named Villetard whom you will probably meet tonight. I don't know how far you may have been imprudent to have become so friendly with the French Ambassador at such a time. But, in Heaven's name, tread carefully. I don't want you enmeshed in any of his schemes.'
Marc-Antoine laughed gently, and thereby earned her reproof.
'This is not a matter for laughter. I beg you to take care, Marc.' She pressed his arm affectionately as she spoke.
It was not the first time that the little baggage had issued one of these little caressing invitations to a greater intimacy, and each time he had been conscious of a certain distress. It gave him a feeling of treachery towards her, remembering that she was at liberty only by his favour, and that in certain circumstances he might find himself constrained to speak the word that should lead to her arrest.
He spoke lightly. 'You are afraid that he will enrol me in his regiment of spies. Few things are less likely.'
'I hope so, indeed. But I am sometimes afraid that he may have been seeking something that would give him a hold upon you. He is quite unscrupulous in his recruiting methods, Marc. I have meant to warn you before.'
'You place me in your debt by this concern.'
She nestled a little nearer to him, and his nostrils were assailed by essences as of roses that came to him from her pelisse. 'It is a very genuine concern, Marc.'
He parried the half-avowal by a flippancy. 'I thank Heaven that Vendramin can't overhear you, or I should expect to find my throat cut by morning.'
'Vendramin! Oh, that!' She spoke in contempt, as if something unpleasant had been mentioned. 'I am delivered of him at last, thank Heaven. That nightmare is over.'
To Marc-Antoine, knowing what he knew, this could only mean that Lallemant had taken the Venetian off her hands. But it was not a matter upon which he could question her.
He sighed. 'The loveliest dreams will turn to nightmares sometimes. It is saddening to hear that it has been so with you.'
There was a silence, at the end of which she turned to him. In the rays of the lantern he could dimly make out her delicate little face. 'You imagine that it was ever a lovely dream for me?' She asked the question on a note of bitterness. And then, abruptly, she was pleading. 'Marc! Don't despise me more than you must, my dear. If you knew all . . . If you knew all about me, and all that has gone to make me what I am, you would find excuses for me. Your mind is generous, Marc. If I had known a man like you earlier in my life . . .' She broke off as if her voice failed her.
He sat quite still, deeply troubled, wishing himself anywhere but in the close propinquity to which the felza compelled him. For a moment he asked himself was she acting, and then dismissed the suspicion as ungenerous. She was speaking again, more steadily, but in a voice gone suddenly dull.
'I don't want to sail under false colours with you, Marc. For you have been so frank and open with me. Shall I tell you about myself? Shall I tell you how I know that Lallemant may have those intentions concerning you?'
'My dear Anne,' he said quietly, in dread, 'I was not made to be father confessor to penitent beauty.'
'Marc, don't jest. I am very serious. Very serious and very sad. I must take you for my confessor, dreadful though you may account my confession. But it is less dreadful to me that you should know the real truth than that you should suppose that I could be moved to love for such a man as Vendramin. Listen, then, my dear, and listen compassionately. Let me begin at the beginning.'
'Neither at the beginning, nor at the end,' he cried. 'A gondola is not a confessional box; nor is this the hour; nor yet will I permit you to yield to a passing emotion.' He seized on this as on an inspiration, with which to stop the avowal that he knew was coming. 'Tomorrow you might regret this surrender to sentiment.'
'Not tomorrow, or ever.'
'For my sake, then, let it wait. Let it wait until you have coldly considered. If tomorrow you should regret that I have silenced you tonight, why, tomorrow you will still be in time to speak if you must.'
'But why for your sake?'
It was not easy to answer her, but he contrived it after a second's thought. 'Lest afterwards you should hate me for the knowledge you will have given me of yourself.'
'Never that. I want you to know. Perhaps it is you who will hate me when you have the knowledge. But at least I shall have been honest with you. That is what I most desire. To be honest with you, Marc.'
He no more doubted her sincerity than he doubted what it was that she desired to tell him. Compassion for her surged in him, and a bitter awareness that there was something of the Judas in his attitude towards her. He was the betrayer who held his hand for just as long as it suited his purposes. Meanwhile, he had acted the friend in such a manner as to urge her to be honest with him to the point of self-betrayal. He realized again, as he had realized when for his own safety's sake it had been necessary for him to fling Louis XVIII to the lions, that to be an effective secret agent it was necessary to approach too closely the border-line between honour and dishonour.
'My dear,' he said quietly, 'you owe me no avowals detrimental to yourself. And whatever avowals are in your mind, let them wait until you have considered further.'
'You do not help me,' she complained.
'Perhaps I do,' he said. 'You will know tomorrow.'
She yielded to his will in the matter, and by that very yielding showed him for how much his wishes counted with her.
Lallemant received them in his work-room, and gave them a very cordial greeting. Madame Lallemant, too, would rejoice, he assured Marc-Antoine. It offended her sense of hospitality that Mr. Melville should have dined with them only once in all the months he had been in Venice. It made her doubt the skill with which she strove to furnish her table.
And then Madame Lallemant arrived to speak for herself, and to carry off the Vicomtesse, leaving in her place Villetard, who had accompanied his hostess.
The three men were no sooner alone than Marc-Antoine was asking the question uppermost in his mind.
'Lallemant, you never informed me of what happened in the matter of Vendramin.'
'Oh, that.' The ambassador, suddenly uncomfortable, affected indifference. 'That is all over and finished. At the pistol-point he did what was required, and so expeditiously that Villetard is already in possession of his chart.'
Marc-Antoine frowned first upon one and then upon the other of them. 'Why was I not informed?'
The ambassador turned to Bonaparte's envoy. 'That's your affair, Villetard. You had better tell him.'
Villetard, with a sneer for Lallemant's cowardice, related coldly, briefly, and exactly what had taken place.
Marc-Antoine's manner betrayed his annoyance. 'And you surrendered to him these drafts!'
For months he had been waiting patiently to see that scoundrel drawn into a situation in which he could be dealt with for what he was. And now that he learnt of it, he learnt at the same time that the fellow had been allowed, not only to escape from the net, but to take with him the only evidence upon which he could have been incriminated.