If you would--Oh, Jesus! Have mercy!"
A livid flash of lightning had burst from the heart of the cloud, and, for an instant, the whole country-side and the interior of the caleche were as light as day. The man's face was within a hand's breadth of her own, his mouth wide open, his eyes mere shining slits, convulsed with silent merriment. Every detail flashed out clear in that vivid light-- his red quivering tongue, the lighter pink beneath it, the broad white teeth, the short brown beard cut into a peak and bristling forward.
But it was not the sudden flash, it was not the laughing, cruel face, which shot an ice-cold shudder through Francoise de Montespan. It was that, of all men upon earth, this was he whom she most dreaded, and whom she had least thought to see.
"Maurice!" she screamed. "Maurice! it is you!"
"Yes, little wifie, it is I. We are restored to each other's arms, you see, after this interval."
"Oh, Maurice, how you have frightened me! How could you be so cruel? Why would you not speak to me?"
"Because it was so sweet to sit in silence and to think that I really had you to myself after all these years, with none to come between. Ah, little wifie, I have often longed for this hour."
"I have wronged you, Maurice; I have wronged you! Forgive me!"
"We do not forgive in our family, my darling Francoise. Is it not like old days to find ourselves driving together? And in this carriage, too. It is the very one which bore us back from the cathedral where you made your vows so prettily. I sat as I sit now, and you sat there, and I took your hand like this, and I pressed it, and--"
"Oh, villain, you have twisted my wrist! You have broken my arm!"
"Oh, surely not, my little wifie! And then you remember that, as you told me how truly you would love me, I leaned forward to your lips, and--"
"Oh, help! Brute, you have cut my mouth! You have struck me with your ring."
"Struck you! Now who would have thought that spring day when we planned out our future, that this also was in the future waiting for me and you? And this! and this!"
He struck savagely at her face in the darkness. She threw herself down, her head pressed against the cushions. With the strength and fury of a maniac he showered his blows above her, thudding upon the leather or crashing upon the woodwork, heedless of his own splintered hands.
"So I have silenced you," said he at last. "I have stopped your words with my kisses before now. But the world goes on, Francoise, and times change, and women grow false, and men grow stern."
"You may kill me if you will," she moaned.
"I will," he said simply.
Still the carriage flew along, jolting and staggering in the deeply-rutted country roads. The storm had passed, but the growl of the thunder and the far-off glint of a lightning-flash were to be heard and seen on the other side of the heavens. The moon shone out with its clear cold light, silvering the broad, hedgeless, poplar-fringed plains, and shining through the window of the carriage upon the crouching figure and her terrible companion. He leaned back now, his arms folded upon his chest, his eyes gloating upon the abject misery of the woman who had wronged him.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked at last.
"To Portillac, my little wifie."
"And why there? What would you do to me?"
"I would silence that little lying tongue forever. It shall deceive no more men."
"You would murder me?"
"If you call it that."
"You have a stone for a heart."
"My other was given to a woman."
"Oh, my sins are indeed punished."
"Rest assured that they will be."
"Can I do nothing to atone?"
"I will see that you atone."
"You have a sword by your side, Maurice. Why do you not kill me, then, if you are so bitter against me? Why do you not pass it through my heart?"
"Rest assured that I would have done so had I not an excellent reason."
"Why, then?"
"I will tell you. At Portillac I have the right of the high justice, the middle, and the low.