Playing with Fire

"You are not hurt?" he asked curtly. "The scoundrel might have drowned
you. Was he mad?"

She was silent. He held out his hand, and she gave him the packet.

"I owe you much," he said, a ring of gaiety, almost of triumph, in his
tone. "More than you guess, Madame. God made you for a soldier's wife,
and a mother of soldiers. What? You are not well, I am afraid?"

"If I could sit down a minute," she faltered. She was swaying on her
feet.

He supported her across the belt of meadow which fringed the bank, and
made her recline against a tree. Then as his men began to come up--for
the alarm had reached them--he would have sent two of them in the boat to
fetch Madame St. Lo to her. But she would not let him.

"Your maid, then?" he said.

"No, Monsieur, I need only to be alone a little! Only to be alone," she
repeated, her face averted; and believing this he sent the men away, and,
taking the boat himself, he crossed over, took in Madame St. Lo and
Carlat, and rowed them to the ferry. Here the wildest rumours were
current. One held that the Huguenot had gone out of his senses; another,
that he had watched for this opportunity of avenging his brethren; a
third, that his intention had been to carry off the Countess and hold her
to ransom. Only Tavannes himself, from his position on the farther bank,
had seen the packet of letters, and the hand which withheld them; and he
said nothing. Nay, when some of the men would have crossed to search for
the fugitive, he forbade them, he scarcely knew why, save that it might
please her; and when the women would have hurried to join her and hear
the tale from her lips he forbade them also.