“Sir,” she cried, clutching forward with her hands and grasping his sleeve, “you frighten me.  You terrify me.  I have never harmed you.  Why should you wish to hurt an unfortunate woman?  Oh, speak to me; for God’s sake, speak!”

Still the patter of rain upon the window, and no other sound save her own sharp breathing.

“Perhaps you do not know who I am!” she continued, endeavouring to assume her usual tone of command, and talking now to an absolute and impenetrable darkness.  “You may learn when it is too late that you have chosen the wrong person for this pleasantry.  I am the Marquise de Montespan, and I am not one who forgets a slight.  If you know anything of the court, you must know that my word has some weight with the king.  You may carry me away in this carriage, but I am not a person who can disappear without speedy inquiry, and speedy vengeance if I have been wronged.  If you would—­Oh, Jesus!  Have mercy!”

A livid flash of lightning had burst from the heart of the cloud, and, for an instant, the whole country-side and the interior of the caleche were as light as day.  The man’s face was within a hand’s breadth of her own, his mouth wide open, his eyes mere shining slits, convulsed with silent merriment.  Every detail flashed out clear in that vivid light—­ his red quivering tongue, the lighter pink beneath it, the broad white teeth, the short brown beard cut into a peak and bristling forward.

But it was not the sudden flash, it was not the laughing, cruel face, which shot an ice-cold shudder through Francoise de Montespan.  It was that, of all men upon earth, this was he whom she most dreaded, and whom she had least thought to see.

“Maurice!” she screamed.  “Maurice! it is you!”

“Yes, little wifie, it is I. We are restored to each other’s arms, you see, after this interval.”

“Oh, Maurice, how you have frightened me!  How could you be so cruel?  Why would you not speak to me?”

“Because it was so sweet to sit in silence and to think that I really had you to myself after all these years, with none to come between.  Ah, little wifie, I have often longed for this hour.”

“I have wronged you, Maurice; I have wronged you!  Forgive me!”

“We do not forgive in our family, my darling Francoise.  Is it not like old days to find ourselves driving together?  And in this carriage, too.  It is the very one which bore us back from the cathedral where you made your vows so prettily.  I sat as I sit now, and you sat there, and I took your hand like this, and I pressed it, and—­”

“Oh, villain, you have twisted my wrist!  You have broken my arm!”

“Oh, surely not, my little wifie!  And then you remember that, as you told me how truly you would love me, I leaned forward to your lips, and—­”

“Oh, help!  Brute, you have cut my mouth!  You have struck me with your ring.”

“Struck you!  Now who would have thought that spring day when we planned out our future, that this also was in the future waiting for me and you?  And this! and this!”