Count Hannibal Part 54

"But your heart," he cried fiercely, "is his! Your heart, which you told me in the meadow could never be mine!"

"I lied," she murmured, laughing tearfully, and her hands hovered over him. "It has come back! And it is on my lips."

And she leant over and kissed him. And Count Hannibal knew that he had entered into his kingdom, the sovereignty of a woman's heart.

An hour later there was a stir in the village on the mainland. Lanthorns began to flit to and fro. Sulkily men were saddling and preparing for the road. It was far to Challans, farther to Lege--more than one day, and many a weary league to Ponts de Ce and the Loire. The men who had ridden gaily southwards on the scent of spoil and revenge turned their backs on the castle with many a sullen oath and word. They burned a hovel or two, and stripped such as they spared, after the fas.h.i.+on of the day; and it had gone ill with the peasant woman who fell into their hands. Fortunately, under cover of the previous night every soul had escaped from the village, some to sea, and the rest to take shelter among the sand-dunes; and as the troopers rode up the path from the beach, and through the green valley, where their horses s.h.i.+ed from the bodies of the men they had slain, there was not an eye to see them go.

Or to mark the man who rode last, the man of the white face--scarred on the temple--and the burning eyes, who paused on the brow of the hill, and, before he pa.s.sed beyond, cursed with quivering lips the foe who had escaped him. The words were lost, as soon as spoken, in the murmur of the sea on the causeway; the sea, fit emblem of the Eternal, which rolled its tide regardless of blessing or cursing, good or ill will, nor spared one jot of ebb or flow because a puny creature had spoken to the night.