But the last hour had wrought a change. Her eyes were grown restless,
her colour came and went. The past stirred in its shallow--ah, so
shallow--grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she might,
thrust out hands to plague and torment her. If the man who sought to
speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the
skirts of her party, were Tignonville--her lover, who at his own request
had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure from Paris--then
her plight was a sorry one. For what woman, wedded as she had been
wedded, could think otherwise than indulgently of his persistence? And
yet, lover and husband! What peril, what shame the words had often
spelled! At the thought only she trembled and her colour ebbed. She
saw, as one who stands on the brink of a precipice, the depth which
yawned before her. She asked herself, shivering, if she would ever sink
to that.
All the loyalty of a strong nature, all the virtue of a good woman,
revolted against the thought. True, her husband--husband she must call
him--had not deserved her love; but his bizarre magnanimity, the gloomy,
disdainful kindness with which he had crowned possession, even the unity
of their interests, which he had impressed upon her in so strange a
fashion, claimed a return in honour.
To be paid--how? how? That was the crux which perplexed, which
frightened, which harassed her. For, if she told her suspicions, she
exposed her lover to capture by one who had no longer a reason to be
merciful. And if she sought occasion to see Tignonville and so to
dissuade him, she did it at deadly risk to herself. Yet what other
course lay open to her if she would not stand by? If she would not play
the traitor? If she-"Madame,"--it was her husband, and he spoke to her suddenly,--"are you
not well?" And, looking up guiltily, she found his eyes fixed curiously
on hers.
Her face turned red and white and red again, and she faltered something
and looked from him, but only to meet Madame St. Lo's eyes. My lady
laughed softly in sheer mischief.
"What is it?" Count Hannibal asked sharply.
But Madame St. Lo's answer was a line of Ronsard.