The duke stood still, frowning; then he slowly dropped his smoking pistol into his pocket. For a moment longer he stood, and a smile broadened on his face as he raised his eyes to me.
“Let him,” he said briefly; and his glance rested on me for a moment in defiant significance. And then, without another word, he turned on his heel. He took no heed of Lafleur’s dead body, that seemed to fondle the box, huddling it in a ghastly embrace, nor of me, who swayed and tottered and sank on the ground by the corpse. With set lips and eager eyes he passed me, taking the road by which we had come. And I, hugging my wounded arm, with open eyes and parted lips, saw him dive in among the trees and disappear toward the house. And I looked round on the iron box and the dead body—two caskets robbed of all that made them more than empty lumber.
Minute followed minute; and then I heard the hoofs of a horse galloping at full speed along the road from the house toward Avranches. Lafleur was dead and done with; Pierre might go his ways; I lay fainting in the wood; the Cardinal’s Necklace was still against my side. What recked the Duke of Saint-Maclou of all that? I knew, as I heard the thud of the hoofs on the road, that by the time the first reddening rays reached over the horizon he would be at the convent, seeking the woman who was all the world to him.
And I sat there helpless, fearful of what would befall her. For what could a convent full of
