ounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him was
gone. "You have said it, and put that between us which will not be
removed. I could have forgiven blows," she continued, breathless in her
excitement, "so you had thought me what I am. But now you will do well
to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For were
you there, and raised your hand against me--not that that touches me, but
it will do--and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the
tower at my word."

"Indeed?"

"Ay, indeed! And indeed, Monsieur!"

Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.

"And this is your new tone, Madame, is it?" he said, slowly and after a
pregnant pause. "The crossing of a river has wrought so great a change
in you?"

"No!" she cried.

"Yes," he said. And, despite herself, she flinched before the grimness
of his tone. "You have yet to learn one thing, however: that I do not
change. That, north or south, I am the same to those who are the same to
me. That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other, in
the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my heels! I
go to Vrillac--"

"You--go?" she cried. "You go?"

"I go," he repeated, "to-morrow. And among your own people I will see
what language you will hold. While you were in my power I spared you.
Now that you are in your own land, now that you lift your hand against
me, I will show you of what make I am. If blows will not tame you, I
will try that will suit you less. Ay, you wince, Madame! You had done
well had you thought twice before you threatened, and thrice before you
took in hand to scare Tavannes with a parcel of clowns and fisherfolk. To-
morrow, to Vrillac and your duty! And one word more, Madame," he
continued, turning back to her truculently when he had gone some paces
from her. "If I find you plotting with your lover by the way I will hang
not you, but him. I have spared him a score of times; but I know him,
and I do not trust him."

"Nor me," she said, and with a white, set face she looked at him in the
moonlight. "Had you not better hang me now?"

"Why?"

"Lest I do you an injury!" she cried with passion; and she raised her
hand and pointed northward. "Lest I kill you some night, Monsieur! I
tell you, a thousand men on your heels are less dangerous than the woman
at your side--if she hate you."

"Is it so?" he cried. His hand flew to his hilt; his dagger flashed out.
Bu