She did not answer, and in the intense silence which held the room in its freezing grasp a woman choked, another broke into weeping.  The colour ebbed from the cheeks of more than one; the men fidgeted on their feet.

Count Hannibal looked round, his head high.  “There is no call for tears,” he said; and whether he spoke in irony or in a strange obtuseness was known only to himself.  “Mademoiselle is in no hurry—­and rightly—­to answer a question so momentous.  Under the pressure of utmost peril, she passed her word; the more reason that, now the time has come to redeem it, she should do so at leisure and after thought.  Since she gave her promise, Monsieur, she has had more than one opportunity of evading its fulfilment.  But she is a Vrillac, and I know that nothing is farther from her thoughts.”

He was silent a moment; and then, “Mademoiselle,” he said, “I would not hurry you.”

Her eyes were closed, but at that her lips moved.  “I am—­willing,” she whispered.  And a fluttering sigh, of relief, of pity, of God knows what, filled the room.

“You are satisfied, M. La Tribe?”

“I do not—­”

“Man!” With a growl as of a tiger, Count Hannibal dropped the mask.  In two strides he was at the minister’s side, his hand gripped his shoulder; his face, flushed with passion, glared into his.  “Will you play with lives?” he hissed.  “If you do not value your own, have you no thought of others?  Of these?  Look and count!  Have you no bowels?  If she will save them, will not you?”

“My own I do not value.”

“Curse your own!” Tavannes cried in furious scorn.  And he shook the other to and fro.  “Who thought of your life?  Will you doom these?  Will you give them to the butcher?”

“My lord,” La Tribe answered, shaken in spite of himself, “if she be willing—­”

“She is willing.”

“I have nought to say.  But I caught her words indistinctly.  And without her consent—­”

“She shall speak more plainly.  Mademoiselle—­”

She anticipated him.  She had risen, and stood looking straight before her, seeing nothing.

“I am willing,” she muttered with a strange gesture, “if it must be.”

He did not answer.

“If it must be,” she repeated slowly, and with a heavy sigh.  And her chin dropped on her breast.  Then, abruptly, suddenly—­it was a strange thing to see—­she looked up.  A change as complete as the change which had come over Count Hannibal a minute before came over her.  She sprang to his side; she clutched his arm and devoured his face with her eyes.  “You are not deceiving me?” she cried.  “You have Tignonville below?  You—­oh, no, no!” And she fell back from him, her eyes distended, her voice grown suddenly shrill and defiant, “You have not!  You are deceiving me!  He has escaped, and you have lied to me!”

“I?”

“Yes, you have lied to me!” It was the last fierce flicker of hope when hope seemed dead:  the last clutch of the drowning at the straw that floated before the eyes.