The Countess had no such thought. "They must be close upon us!" she
murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order.
"Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly. "If we knew what had
happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, Madame. For
that matter, I know what I wish he would do. And our heads are set for
it."
"What?"
"Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes.
"For Vrillac?"
"Yes."
"Ah, if he would!" she cried, her face turning pale. "If he would. He
would be safe there!"
"Ay, quite safe!" he answered with a peculiar intonation. And he looked
at her askance.
He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into his
brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve, and that
they were in sympathy. And Tavannes, seeing them talking together, and
noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed the same opinion,
and retired more darkly into himself. The downfall of his plan for
dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond compare, a plan
dependent on the submission of Angers--his disappointment in this might
have roused the worst passions of a better man. But there was in this
man a pride on a level at least with his other passions: and to bear
himself in this hour of defeat and flight so that if she could not love
him she must admire him, checked in a strange degree the current of his
rage.
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