"Go on, oh, go on!" she said. "What is it? why is he here? Have you
no pity, no heart?" She turned towards the priest. "You are a man of
God. You said once that you would help me make peace between my husband
and Monsieur Iberville, but you join here with his enemies."

"Madame, believe me, you are wrong. I have done all I could: I have
brought you here."

"Yes, yes; forgive me," she replied. She turned to Perrot again. "It is
with you, then. You helped to save my life once--what right have you to
destroy it now? You and Monsieur Iberville gave me the world when it
were easy to have lost it; now when the world is everything to me because
my husband lives in it, you would take his life and break mine."

Suddenly a thought flashed into her mind. Her eyes brightened, her hand
trembled towards Perrot, and touched him. "Once I gave you something,
monsieur, which I had worn on my own bosom. That little gift--of a
grateful girl, tell me, have you it still?"

Perrot drew from his doublet the medallion she had given him, and
fingered it uncertainly.

"Then you value it," she added. "You value my gift, and yet when my
husband is a prisoner, to what perilous ends God only knows, you deny me
to him. I will not plead; I ask as my right; I have come from Count
Frontenac; he sent me to this good priest here. Were my husband in the
citadel now I should be admitted. He is here with the man who, you know,
once said he loved me. My husband is wickedly held a prisoner; I ask for
entrance to him."