The lady
seemed to be giving him a series of orders. The short conference ended
by an imperious gesture of the lady's hand pointing out to the
Chouan the lovers standing a little distance apart. Before obeying,
Marche-a-Terre glanced at Francine whom he seemed to pity; he wished to
speak to her, and the girl was aware that his silence was compulsory.
The rough and sunburnt skin of his forehead wrinkled, and his eyebrows
were drawn violently together. Did he think of disobeying a renewed
order to kill Mademoiselle de Verneuil? The contortion of his face
made him all the more hideous to Madame du Gua, but to Francine the
flash of his eye seemed almost gentle, for it taught her to feel
intuitively that the violence of his savage nature would yield to her
will as a woman, and that she reigned, next to God, in that rough
heart.
The lovers were interrupted in their tender interview by Madame du
Gua, who ran up to Marie with a cry, and pulled her away as though
some danger threatened her. Her real object however, was to enable a
member of the royalist committee of Alencon, whom she saw approaching
them, to speak privately to the Gars.
"Beware of the girl you met at the hotel in Alencon; she will betray
you," said the Chevalier de Valois, in the young man's ear; and
immediately he and his little Breton horse disappeared among the
bushes from which he had issued.
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