"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 fashion 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 shied 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,Chapter
and, before he passed 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.