“What have I, then, done to you,” said Felton, much agitated, “that you should load me with such a responsibility before God and before men? In a few days you will be away from this place; your life, Madame, will then no longer be under my care, and,” added he, with a sigh, “then you can do what you will with it.”
“So,” cried Milady, as if she could not resist giving utterance to a holy indignation, “you, a pious man, you who are called a just man, you ask but one thing—and that is that you may not be inculpated, annoyed, by my death!”
“It is my duty to watch over your life, Madame, and I will watch.”
“But do you understand the mission you are fulfilling? Cruel enough, if I am guilty; but what name can you give it, what name will the Lord give it, if I am innocent?”
“I am a soldier, Madame, and fulfill the orders I have received.”
“Do you believe, then, that at the day of the Last Judgment God will separate blind executioners from iniquitous judges? You are not willing that I should kill my body, and you make yourself the agent of him who would kill my soul.”
“But I repeat it again to you,” replied Felton, in great emotion, “no danger threatens you; I will answer for Lord de Winter as for myself.”
“Dunce,” cried Milady, “dunce! who dares to answer for another man, when the wisest, when those most after God’s own heart, hesitate to answer for themselves, and who ranges himself on the side of the strongest and the most fortunate, to crush the weakest and the most unfortunate.”
“Impossible, Madame, impossible,” murmured Felton, who felt to the bottom of his heart the justness of this argument. “A prisoner, you