"Ah, you will be angry, but I thought--I really thought you loved the Duke."
"You have strange fancies. Am I likely to have any feeling but hatred for a tyrant and a usurper?"
And then Christine had wished to be left alone, and Lucille wondered whether her anger was as great as it seemed.
Who shall understand the heart of a woman? Truly, not even her lover. Christine told herself that she was glad Roger Herrick had not been to see her, yet she watched from her window at those times she expected to see him in the court-yard. As Duke he might be nothing more than an ambitious tyrant, but she could not altogether forget what manner of man he had been in the charcoal-burners' hut and at the house in the Place Beauvoisin.
She was alone, and Roger Herrick filled her thoughts, when the door opened, and Herrick entered. He came unannounced, the door was closed behind him, and they were alone. Jean's advice had not passed unheeded. Herrick had come determined to make an explanation. A slight color stole into Christine's face. Perhaps she was glad he had come, yet she resented the manner of his coming; and face to face with her, the memory of her scorn the other night rose vividly in Herrick's mind. In the short pause which ensued, Fate seemed to draw barriers between them.
"Had I sent to ask you to see me, you would probably have refused," said Herrick.
"Therefore I use the only way open to me," he answered.
"At present you are master. A prisoner complains of insult in vain."
"You are free to go where you will in the castle, mademoiselle. I thought you understood that."
"I wish to leave the castle," she answered.
"At present that is impossible," he replied. "I have too many enemies abroad as it is."
"Why not crush them while you have the opportunity?" she said. "Kill the Count, kill me. Why do you hesitate?"
"Count Felix certainly merits death," Herrick returned, "but I fear others more than I do the Count."
"Is it Maurice you fear? Your ambition hadn't fully blossomed that day in the forest, or you would not have saved him."
"Do you suppose your action the other night would have been possible had you spoken the whole truth, and declared that Maurice was alive, that you were the one man who knew that he was alive?"