"An if she were!" fiercely the Black Seigneur confronted them.

While, hesitating, they sought for a reply, quickly he went on. Who had a better right to her? The Black Seigneur! The Lady Elise!

Harshly he laughed. Was it not fair spoil? His Excellency's enemy; his Excellency's daughter. Did they think treasure sweeter than revenge? Let them try to rob him of it! As for the ring?

Contemptuously he took it from my lady's hand; threw it among them.

A few scrambled, others were still for finishing the tragedy then. The people _versus_ the lords and their sp.a.w.n. "Kill at once!" the injunction had gone forth from Paris.

As he spoke, one of the fiercest put out his hand; touched my lady, when the fingers of the Black Seigneur gripped hard his throat; hurled him so violently back, he lay still. Companions sprang to his aid; certain of the peasants interfered.

"Let him alone!"

"He speaks fair!"

"Bah! To-night are all equal."

"Your Black Seigneur no better than others!"

"You lie!" In a high tone the woman with the great lady's hat broke in. "At them, my chickens! Beat well these Paris rogues, who come only for the picking!"

"Yes; beat them well!"

But the runagates of the great city were not of a kind to submit lightly; curses and blows were exchanged; knives gleamed and swords flashed. Amid a scene of confusion, the cause of it stayed not to witness the outcome; running down the sloping way, soon found himself on the sands; then keeping to the shadows, pa.s.sed around the corner of the wall.

Here, for the time concealed was he safe; none followed, and, leaning against the damp blocks of masonry, breathing hard, as a man weak from fatigue, loss of blood, he sought to recover his strength. It returned only too slowly; the pa.s.sing la.s.situde annoyed him; for the moment he forgot he had but recently come from the dungeon and the hardships that sap elasticity and vigor. He was impatient to move on; looked at my lady--and a sudden fear smote him! How white she appeared! Had she-- His hand trembled at her heart; a blank dismay overcame him; then joy-- At that instant he thought not of the gulf between them; was conscious only he held her--slender, beautiful--in his arms; that she seemed all his own, with her breath on his cheek, her soft lips so close. Above sounded the madness of the night; the crackling of flames; the intemperate voices! In the angle of the wall, with darkness a blanket around them, he pushed back the hair from her clear brow, bent over, closer--suddenly straightened.

"_Pardi_!" he muttered, a flush on his face. "Am I, then, like the others--pillagers, thieves?"

Several moments he yet stood, breathing deep; then, starting away, set himself to the task of crossing the vast stretch of beach between the Mount and the distant lights of a ship.

The sandy plain had never seemed so interminable; before him, his shadow and that of my lady danced ever illusively away; behind, the great rock gave forth a hundred shooting flames, while, as emblematic of the demolition of so much that was beautiful, higher than saint with helpless sword on cathedral top, a cloud of smoke belched up; waved sidewise like a monstrous funeral plume. A symbol, it seemed to fill the sky; to move and nod and flaunt its ominous blackness from this majestic outpost of the land. Walking in a vivid crimson glow, the Black Seigneur gazed only ahead, where now, on that monotonous desert, the rim of the sea on a sudden obtruded. As he advanced, sparkles red as rubies--laughing lights--leaped in the air; at the same time a seething murmur broke upon the stillness.

Toward those leaping bright points and the source of that deep-sounding cadence, the young man stumbled forward more rapidly, less cautiously, also, it may be; for while he was yet some distance from the water's rim, his feet fell on sand that gave way beneath them. He would have sprung back, but felt himself sinking; strove to get out, only to settle the deeper! The edge of the _lise_, with safety beyond, well he could see, where the satin-like smoothness of the treacherous slough!

merged into a welcome silk-like shimmering of the trustworthy sands.

That verge, however, was remote; out of reach of effort of his to attain; his very endeavors caused him to become the more firmly imbedded. Had he cast my lady aside, possibly could he have extricated himself; but with her, an additional weight, weighing him down--

Loudly he called out; only the sea answered. Now were the clinging particles at his waist; he lifted my lady higher; clear of them! Once more raised his voice--this time not in vain!

"_Mon capitaine_! Where are you?"

"Here!"

"We don't see you."

"You won't soon, unless--"

The end of a line struck the sand.

The night had almost pa.s.sed; its last black hour, like a pall, lay over the sea, where, far from the Mount, a ship swayed and tossed. In the narrow confines of her master's cabin, the faint glimmering of a lamp revealed a man bending over a paper, yellow and worn; the lines so faint and delicate, they seemed almost to escape him!

"How strange, after all these years, the sight of your handwriting!--and now, to be writing you! Yet is it meet--to say farewell! For that which you have heard, _mon ami_, is true. I am going to die. You say, you heard I was not well; I answer what really you heard; the question, _mon ami_, beneath your words! ... And, dying, it is well with me. I have wronged no soul on earth--except you, my friend, and you forgive me.... I had hoped the years would efface that old memory. You say they have not.... It is wise you are going away."

The reader paused; listened to the sea; the moaning and sighing, like voices on the wings of the storm.

"You speak in your letter about 'trickery'--used to estrange us! Think no more of it, I beg you. What is past, is gone--as I, part of that past, when we were boy and girl together--soon shall be. And come not near the Mount. There can be no meeting for us on earth. I send you my adieu from afar.... It is only a shadow that speaks ... _mon ami_."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

SOME TIME LATER

The little Norman isle, home of Pierre Laroche, so wild and bleak-looking many months of the year, resembles a flowering garden in the spring; then, its lap full of buds and blossoms, smiling, redolent, it lifts itself from the broad bosom of the deep. And all the light embellishments of the golden time it sets forth daintily; fringing the black cliffs with cl.u.s.ters of sea campion, white and frothy as the spray, trailing green ivy from precipitous heights to the verge of the wooing waters, whose waves seem to creep up timorously, peep into the many caves, bright with sea-anemones, and retreat quickly, as awed by a sudden glimpse of fairyland.

Near the entrance of one of these magical chambers, abloom with strange, scentless flowers, sat, a certain afternoon in April, a man and a woman, who, looking out over the blue sea, conversed in desultory fashion.

"From what your father tells me, Mistress Nanette," the man, an aged priest, was speaking, "the Seigneur Desaurac should be here to-day?"

"My father had a letter from him a few days ago to that effect,"

answered the young woman somewhat shortly.

"Let me see," apparently the old man did not notice the change in his companion's manner, "he has been away now about a year? It was in July he brought the Governor's daughter to the island one day and sailed the next!" Nanette made a movement. "How time flies!" he sighed. "Let us hope it a.s.suages grief, as they say! You think she is contented here?"

"The Lady Elise? Why not? At least, she seems so; has with her, her old nurse, my aunt, who fortunately escaped from the Mount--"

"But the death of her father? It must have been a terrible blow--one not easy to forget!"

"Of course," said Nanette slowly, "she has felt his loss."

The old man gazed down. "I have sometimes wondered what she knows about the causes of the enmity that existed between his Excellency and the Black Seigneur?"

The other's eyes lifted keenly. "When last did you see her, Father?"

"She comes often to my cottage to walk and--"

"Talk?"

"Well, yes!" The fine spiritual face expressed a twinge of uneasiness.

"About the past?"

The priest shifted slightly. "Sometimes! An old man lives much in the past and it is natural to wander on a bit aimlessly at times, and--"

"Confess, Father, she has learned much from you?" Nanette laughed.