He paused awhile and a curious laugh--half-convulsive and not unmixed with sobs--shook his broad shoulders. Neither the duc nor Yvonne made any comment on what they heard: the duc felt like a fly caught in a death-dealing web. He was dazed with the horror of his position, dazed above all with the rush of bitter remorse which had surged up in his heart and mind, when he realised that it was his own folly, his obstinacy--aye! and his heartlessness which had brought this awful fate upon his daughter. And Yvonne felt that whatever she might endure of misery and hopelessness was nothing in comparison with what her father must feel with the addition of bitter self-reproach.
"Are you beginning to understand the position better now, M. le duc?" queried Martin-Roget after awhile.
The duc sank back nerveless upon the pile of cordages close by. Yvonne was leaning with her back against the taffrail, her two arms outstretched, the north-west wind blowing her soft brown hair about her face whilst her eyes sought through the gloom to read the lines of cruelty and hatred which must be distorting Martin-Roget's face now.
"And," she said quietly after awhile, "you have waited all these years, Monsieur, nursing thoughts of revenge and of hate against us. Ah! believe me," she added earnestly, "though God knows my heart is full of misery at this moment, and though I know that at your bidding death will so soon claim me and my father as his own, yet would I not change my wretchedness for yours."
"And I, citizeness," he said roughly, addressing her for the first time in the manner prescribed by the revolutionary government, "would not change places with any king or other tyrant on earth. Yes," he added as he came a step or two closer to her, "I have waited all these years. For four years I have thought and striven and planned, planned to be even with your father and with you one day. You had fled the country--like cowards, bah!--ready to lend your arms to the foreigner against your own country in order to re-establish a tyrant upon the throne whom the whole of the people of France loathed and detested. You had fled, but soon I learned whither you had gone. Then I set to work to gain access to you.... I learned English.... I too went to England ... under an assumed name ... with the necessary introductions so as to gain a footing in the circles in which you moved. I won your father's condescension--almost his friendship!... The rich banker from Brest should be fleeced in order to provide funds for the armies that were to devastate France--and the rich banker of Brest refused to be fleeced unless he was lured by the promise of Mlle. de Kernogan's hand in marriage."