Presently, on the third day of our journey I think, couriers from the Court passed us:  and henceforth forestalled us.  One of these messengers—­who I learned from the talk about me was bound for Cahors with letters for the Lieutenant-Governor and the Count-Bishop—­the Vidame interviewed and stopped.  How it was managed I do not know, but I fear the Count-Bishop never got his letters, which I fancy would have given him some joint authority.  Certainly we left the messenger—­a prudent fellow with a care for his skin—­in comfortable quarters at Limoges, whence I do not doubt he presently returned to Paris at his leisure.

The strangeness of the journey however arose from none of these things, but from the relations of our party to one another.  After the first day we four rode together, unmolested, so long as we kept near the centre of the straggling cavalcade.  The Vidame always rode alone, and in front, brooding with bent head and sombre face over his revenge, as I supposed.  He would ride in this fashion, speaking to no one and giving no orders, for a day together.  At times I came near to pitying him.  He had loved Kit in his masterful way, the way of one not wont to be thwarted, and he had lost her—­lost her, whatever might happen.  He would get nothing after all by his revenge.  Nothing but ashes in the mouth.  And so I saw in softer moments something inexpressibly melancholy in that solitary giant-figure pacing always alone.

He seldom spoke to us.  More rarely to Louis.  When he did, the harshness of his voice and his cruel eyes betrayed the gloomy hatred in which he held him.  At meals he ate at one end of the table:  we four at the other, as three of us had done on that first evening in Paris.  And sometimes the covert looks, the grim sneer he shot at his rival—­his prisoner—­made me shiver even in the sunshine.  Sometimes, on the other hand, when I took him unawares, I found an expression on his face I could not read.

I told Croisette, but warily, my suspicions of his purpose.  He heard me, less astounded to all appearance than I had expected.  Presently I learned the reason.  He had his own view.  “Do you not think it possible, Anne?” he suggested timidly—­we were of course alone at the time—­“that he thinks to make Louis resign Mademoiselle?”

“Resign her!” I exclaimed obtusely.  “How?”

“By giving him a choice—­you understand?”

I did understand I saw it in a moment.  I had been dull not to see it before.  Bezers might put it in this way:  let M. de Pavannes resign his mistress and live, or die and lose her.

“I see,” I answered.  “But Louis would not give her up.  Not to him!”

“He would lose her either way,” Croisette answered in a low tone.  “That is not however the worst of it.  Louis is in his power.  Suppose he thinks to make Kit the arbiter, Anne, and puts Louis up to ransom, setting Kit for the price?  And gives her the option of accepting himself, and saving Louis’ life; or refusing, and leaving Louis to die?”