"
"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.
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