The duke, after a moment’s hesitation and bewilderment, raised his pistol and fired; but the active little scoundrel was safe among the trees, and we heard the twigs cracking and the leaves rustling as he pushed his way through the wood.  He was gone—­scot free for us, but with his score to Lafleur well paid.  I swayed where I stood, to and fro:  the pain was considerable, and things seemed to go round before my eyes; yet I turned to my companion, crying: 

“After him!  He’ll get off!  I’m hit; I can’t run!”

The duke stood still, frowning; then he slowly dropped his smoking pistol into his pocket.  For a moment longer he stood, and a smile broadened on his face as he raised his eyes to me.

“Let him,” he said briefly; and his glance rested on me for a moment in defiant significance.  And then, without another word, he turned on his heel.  He took no heed of Lafleur’s dead body, that seemed to fondle the box, huddling it in a ghastly embrace, nor of me, who swayed and tottered and sank on the ground by the corpse.  With set lips and eager eyes he passed me, taking the road by which we had come.  And I, hugging my wounded arm, with open eyes and parted lips, saw him dive in among the trees and disappear toward the house.  And I looked round on the iron box and the dead body—­two caskets robbed of all that made them more than empty lumber.

Minute followed minute; and then I heard the hoofs of a horse galloping at full speed along the road from the house toward Avranches.  Lafleur was dead and done with; Pierre might go his ways; I lay fainting in the wood; the Cardinal’s Necklace was still against my side.  What recked the Duke of Saint-Maclou of all that?  I knew, as I heard the thud of the hoofs on the road, that by the time the first reddening rays reached over the horizon he would be at the convent, seeking the woman who was all the world to him.

And I sat there helpless, fearful of what would befall her.  For what could a convent full of women avail against his mastering rage?  And a sudden sharp pang ran through me, startling even myself in its intensity; so that I cried out aloud, raising my sound arm in the air toward Heaven, like a man who swears a vow: 

“By God, no!  By God, no—­no!”

CHAPTER XV.

I Choose my Way.

The dead man lay there, embracing the empty box that had brought him to his death; and for many minutes I sat within a yard of him, detained by the fascination and grim mockery of the picture no less than by physical weakness and a numbness of my brain.  My body refused to act, and my mind hardly urged its indolent servant.  I was in sore distress for Marie Delhasse,—­my vehement cry witnessed it,—­yet I had not the will to move to her aid; will and power both seemed to fail me.  I could fear, I could shrink with horror, but I could not act; nor did I move till the increasing pain of my wound drove me, as it might any unintelligent creature, to scramble to my feet and seek, half-blindly, for some place that should afford shelter and succor.