She had her own troubles, and to-day was almost sinking under them. But this was not her way of bearing them. She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Very well," she said, "I will go if I can do nothing."
"Do?" he cried vehemently. "What can you do?" And then, in the act of turning from him, she stood; so startling was the change, so marvellous the transformation which she saw come over his face. "Do," he repeated, trembling violently, and speaking in a tone as much altered as his expression. He rose to his feet. "Do? Perhaps you--you can do something--still. Wait. Please wait a minute! I--I was not quite myself." He pa.s.sed his hand across his brow. She did not know that behind his face of frightened stupor his mind was working cunningly, following up the idea that had occurred to him.
She began to think him mad. But though she held him in distaste, she had no fear of him; and even when he closed the door with a cringing air, and a look that implored indulgence, she held her ground. "Only, you need not close the door," she said coldly. "There is no one in the house except my mother."
"Messer Basterga?"
"He has gone out. Is it of him," in sudden enlightenment, "that you are afraid?"
He nodded sullenly. "Yes," he said; and then he paused, eyeing her in doubt if he could trust her. At last, "It is, but, if you dared do it, I know how I could draw his teeth! How I could"--with the cruel grin of the coward--"squeeze him! squeeze him!" and he went through the act with his nervous, shaking fingers. "I could hold him like that! I could hold him powerless as the dog that would bite and dare not!"
She stared at him. "You?" she said; it was hard to say whether incredulity or scorn were written more plainly on her face. "You?"
"I! I!" he replied, with the same gesture of holding something. "And I know how to put him in your power also!"
"In my power!"
"Ay."
Her face grew hard as if she too held her enemy pa.s.sive in her grip.
Then her lip curled, and she laughed in scorn. "Ay! And what must I do to bring that about? Something, I suppose, you dare not, Louis?"
"Something you can do more easily than I," he answered doggedly. "A small thing, too," he continued, clasping his hands in his eagerness and looking at her with imploring eyes. "A nothing, a mere nothing!"
"And yet it will do so much?"
"I swear it will."
"Then," she retorted, eyeing him shrewdly, "if it is so easy to do why were you undone a minute ago? And puling like a child in arms?"
"Because," he said, flushing under her eyes, "it--it is not easy for me to do. And I did not see my way."
"It looked like it."
"But I see it now if you will help me. You have only to take a packet of letters from his room--and you go there when you please--and he is yours! While you have the letters he dare not stir hand or foot, lest you bring him to the scaffold!"
"Bring him to the scaffold?"
"Get the letters, give them to me, and I will answer for the rest."
Louis" voice was low, but he shook with excitement. "See!" he continued, his eyes at all times prominent, almost starting from his head, "it might be done this minute. This minute!"
"It might," the girl replied, watching him coldly. "But it will not be done either this minute or at all unless you tell me what is in the letters, and how you come to know about them."
Should he tell her? He fancied that he had no choice. "Messer Blondel the Syndic wants the letters," he answered sullenly. And, urged farther by her expression of disbelief, he told the astonished girl the story which Blondel had told him. The fact that he believed it went far with her; why, for the rest, doubt a story so extraordinary that it seemed to bear the stamp of truth?
"And that is all?" she said when he came to the end.
"Is it not enough?"
"It may be enough," she replied, her resolute manner in strange contrast with his cowardly haste. "Only there is a thing not clear. If the Syndic knows what is in the letters, why does he not seize them and Basterga with them--the traitor with the proof of his treason?"
"Because he is afraid of the Grand Duke," Louis cried. "If he seize Basterga and miss the proof of his treason, what then?"
"Then he is not sure that the letters are there?" Anne replied keenly.
"He is not sure that they would be there when he came to seize them,"
Louis answered. "Basterga might have a dozen confederates in the house ready at a sign to destroy the letters."
She nodded.
"And that is what they will make us out to be," he continued, his voice sinking as his fears returned upon him. "The Syndic threatened as much; and such things have happened a hundred times. I tell you, if we do not do something, we shall suffer with him. But do it, and he is in your power! And if he has any hold on you, it is gone!"
The blood surged to her face. Hold upon her? Ah! Rage--or was it hope?--lightened in her eyes and transformed her face. She was thinking, he guessed, of the hundred insults she had undergone at Basterga"s hands, of the shame-compelling taunts to which she had been forced to listen, of the loathed touch she had been forced to bear. If there was aught in her mind beyond this, any motive deeper or more divine, he did not perceive it; enough, that he saw that she wavered, and he pressed her.
"You will be free," he cried pa.s.sionately. "Freed from him! Freed from fear of him! Say you will do it! Say that you will do it," he continued fervently, and he made as if he would kneel before her. "Do it, and I swear that never shall a word to displease you pa.s.s my lips."
With a glance of scorn that pierced even his selfishness, "Swear only,"
she said, "that you have told me the truth! I ask no more."
"I swear it on my salvation!"
She drew a deep breath.
"I will do it," she said. "The steel box which is chained to the wall?"
"Yes, yes," he panted, "you cannot mistake it. The key----"
"I know where he keeps it."
She said no more, but turned, and regarding his thanks as little as if they had been the wind pa.s.sing by her, she opened the door, crossed the living-room, and vanished up the staircase. He followed her as far as the foot of the stairs, and there stood listening and shifting his feet and biting his nails in an agony of suspense. She had not deigned to bid him watch for Basterga"s coming, but he did so; his eyes on the outer door, through which the scholar must enter, and his tongue and feet in readiness to warn her or save himself, according as the pressure of danger directed the one or the other step.
Meanwhile his ears were on the stretch to catch what she did. He heard her try the door of the room. It was locked. He heard her shake it. Then he guessed that she fetched a key, for after an interval, which seemed an age, he caught the grating of the wards in the lock. After that, she was quiet so long, that but for the apprehensions of Basterga"s coming, which weighed on his coward soul, he must have gone up in sheer jealousy so see what she was doing.
Not that he distrusted her. Even while he waited, and while the thing hung in the balance, he smiled to think how cleverly he had contrived it. On the side of the authorities he would gain favour by delivering the letters: on the other side, if Basterga retained power to harm, it was not he who had taken the letters, nor he who would be exposed to the first blast of vengeance--but the girl. The blame for her, the credit for him! From the nettle danger his wits had plucked the flower safety.
But for his fears he could have chuckled; and then he heard her leave the room, and relock the door. With a gasp of relief, he retired a pace or two, and waited, his eyes fixed on the doorway through which she must enter.
She was long in coming, and when she came his hand, extended to receive the letters, fell by his side, the whispered question died on his lips.
Her face told him that she had failed. It might have told him also that she had built far more on the attempt than she had let him perceive. But what was that to him? It was enough for him that she had not the letters. He could have torn her with his hands. "Where are they? Where are they?" he cried, advancing upon her. "You have not got them?"
"Got them?" And then she straightened herself, and with a pa.s.sionate glance at the door, "No! And he has not come in time to take me in the act, it seems. As I have no doubt you planned, you villain! That I might be more and deeper in his power!"
"No! No!" he cried, recoiling. "I never thought of it!"
"Yes, yes!" she retorted.
He wrung his hands. How was he to make her understand? "I swear," he cried, and he fell on his knees with uplifted hands. "I swear on my knees I thought of no such thing. The tale I told you was true! True, every word of it! And the letters----"
"There are no letters!" she said.