She spoke rapidly in whispers and in short jerky sentences. M. le duc listened to her wide-eyed, a deep line of puzzlement between his brows. Sorrow, remorse, starvation, misery had in a measure numbed his mind. The thought of help, of hope, of friends could not penetrate into his brain.
“A message,” he murmured inanely, “a message. No! no! my girl, you must trust no one. … Pierre Adet. … Pierre Adet is full of evil tricks—he will trap you … he means to destroy us both … he has brought you here so that you should be murdered by these ferocious devils.”
“Impossible, father dear,” she said, still striving to speak bravely. “We have both of us been all this while in the power of Pierre Adet; he could have had no object in bringing me here tonight.”
But the father who had been an insentient tool in the schemes of that miserable intriguer, who had been the means of bringing his only child to this terrible and deadly pass—the man who had listened to the lying counsels and proposals of his own most bitter enemy, could only groan now in terror and in doubt.
“Who can probe the depths of that abominable villain’s plans?” he murmured vaguely.
In the meanwhile the little group who had thought prudence the better part of valour had reached the door. The foremost man amongst them opened it and peered cautiously out into the darkness. He turned back to those behind him, put a finger to his lip and beckoned to them to follow him in silence.
“Yvonne, let us go!” whispered the duc, who had seized his daughter by the hand.
“But father …”
“Let us go!” he reiterated pitiably. “I shall die if we stay here!”
“It won’t be for long, father dear,” she entreated; “if milor should come with his friend, and find us gone, we should be endangering his life as well as our own.”
“I don’t believe it,” he rejoined with the obstinacy of weakness. “I don’t believe in your message … how could milor or anyone come to your rescue, my child? … No one knows that you are here, in this hell in Nantes.”
Yvonne clung to him with the strength of despair. She too was as terrified as any human creature could be and live, but terror had not altogether swept away her belief in that mysterious message, in that tall guide who had led her hither, in that scarlet device—the five-petalled flower which stood for everything that was most gallant and most brave.
She desired with all her might to remain here—despite everything, despite the awful brawl that was raging round her and which sickened her, despite the horror of the whole thing—to remain here and to wait. She put her arms round her father: she dragged him back every time that he tried to move. But a sort of unnatural strength seemed to have conquered his former debility. His attempts to get away became more and more determined and more and more febrile.
“Come, Yvonne! we must go!” he continued to murmur intermittently and with ever-growing obstinacy. “No one will notice us … I heard the noise from my garret upstairs … I crept down … I knew no one would notice me … Come—we must go … now is our time.”
“Father, dear, whither could we go? Once in the streets of Nantes what would happen to us?”
“We can find our way to the Loire!” he retorted almost brutally. He shook himself free from her restraining arms and gripped her firmly by the hand. He tried to drag her toward the door, whilst she still struggled to keep him back. He had just caught sight of the group of men and women at the front door: their leader was standing upon the threshold and was still peering out into the darkness.
But the next moment they all came to a halt: what their leader had perceived through the darkness did not evidently quite satisfy him: he turned and held a whispered consultation with the others. M. le duc strove with all his might to join in with that group. He felt that in its wake would lie the road to freedom. He would have struck Yvonne for standing in the way of her own safety.
“Father dear,” she contrived finally to say to him, “if you go hence, you will go alone. Nothing will move me from here, because I know that milor will come.”
“Curse you for your obstinacy,” retorted the duc, “you jeopardise my life and yours.”
Then suddenly from the angle of the room where wrangling and fighting were at their fiercest, there came a loud call:
“Look out, père Lemoine, your aristos are running away. You are losing your last chance of those fifty francs.”
It was Paul Friche who had shouted. His position on the table was giving him a commanding view over the heads of the threatening, shouting, perspiring crowd, and he had just caught sight of M. le duc dragging his daughter by force toward the door.
“The authors of all this pother,” he added with an oath, “and they will get away whilst we have the police about our ears.”
“Name of a name of a dog,” swore Lemoine from behind his bar, “that shall not be. Come along, maman, let us bring those aristos along here. Quick now.”
It was all done in a second. Lemoine and his wife, with the weight and authority of the masters of the establishment, contrived to elbow their way through the crowd. The next moment Yvonne felt herself forcibly dragged away from her father.
“This way, my girl, and no screaming,” a bibulous voice said in her ear,
