And indeed the priest’s eyes presently sank.  “Our bargain is to go for nothing?” he muttered sullenly.

“I know of no bargain,” quoth the Vidame.  “And I have no time to lose, splitting hairs here.  Set it down to what you like.  Say it is a whim of mine, a fad, a caprice.  Only understand that Madame de Pavannes stays.  We go.  And—­” he added this, as a sudden thought seemed to strike him, “though I would not willingly use compulsion to a lady, I think Madame d’O had better come too.”

“You speak masterfully,” the priest said with a sneer, forgetting the tone he had himself used a few minutes before to Mirepoix.

“Just so.  I have forty horsemen over the way,” was the dry answer.  “For the moment, I am master of the legions, Coadjutor.”

“That is true,” Madame d’O said; so softly that I started.  She had scarcely spoken since Bezers’ entrance.  As she spoke now, she shook back the hood from her face and disclosed the chestnut hair clinging about her temples—­deep blots of colour on the abnormal whiteness of her skin, “That is true, M. de Bezers,” she said.  “You have the legions.  You have the power.  But you will not use it, I think, against an old friend.  You will not do us this hurt when I—­But listen.”

He would not.  In the very middle of her appeal he cut her short —­brute that he was!  “No Madame!” he burst out violently, disregarding the beautiful face, the supplicating glance, that might have moved a stone, “that is just what I will not do.  I will not listen!  We know one another.  Is not that enough?”

She looked at him fixedly.  He returned her gaze, not smiling now, but eyeing her with a curious watchfulness.

And after a long pause she turned from him.  “Very well,” she said softly, and drew a deep, quivering breath, the sound of which reached us.  “Then let us go.”  And without—­strangest thing of all—­bestowing a word or look on her sister, who was weeping bitterly in a chair, she turned to the door and led the way out, a shrug of her shoulders the last thing I marked.

The poor lady heard her departing step however, and sprang up.  It dawned upon her that she was being deserted.  “Diane!  Diane!” she cried distractedly—­and I had to put my hand on Croisette to keep him quiet, there was such fear and pain in her tone—­“I will go!  I will not be left behind in this dreadful place!  Do you hear?  Come back to me, Diane!”

It made my blood run wildly.  But Diane did not come back.  Strange!  And Bezers too was unmoved.  He stood between the poor woman and the door, and by a gesture bid Mirepoix and the priest pass out before him.  “Madame,” he said—­and his voice, stern and hard as ever, expressed no jot of compassion for her, rather such an impatient contempt as a puling child might elicit—­“you are safe here.  And here you will stop!  Weep if you please,” he added cynically, “you will have fewer tears to shed to-morrow.”