His full bourgeois face was pale;
yet peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate
resolution. And oddly--very oddly, because I knew that, in
keeping Madame de Pavannes a prisoner, he must be in the wrong--I
sympathised with him. Low-bred trader, tool of Pavannes though
he was, I sympathised with him, when he said firmly:
"She shall not go!"
"I say she shall!" the priest shrieked, losing all control over
himself. "Fool! Madman! You know not what you do!" As the
words passed his lips, he made an adroit forward movement,
surprised the other, clutched him by the arms, and with a
strength I should never have thought lay in his meagre frame,
flung him some paces into the room. "Fool!" he hissed, shaking
his crooked fingers at him in malignant triumph. "There is no
man in Paris, do you hear--or woman either--shall thwart me to-
night!"
"Is that so? Indeed?"
The words, and the cold, cynical voice, were not those of
Mirepoix; they came from behind. The priest wheeled round, as if
he had been stabbed in the back.
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