Count Hannibal

Ay, why? For now a score of contingencies came into the young man's mind

and tortured him. Had Madame St. Lo withdrawn to safer quarters and

closed the house? Or, good Catholic as she was, had she given way to

panic, and determined to open to no one? Or was she ill? Or had she

perished in the general disorder? Or-And then, even as the men began to slink towards him, his heart leapt. He

heard a footstep heavy and slow move through the house. It came nearer

and nearer. A moment, and an iron-grated Judas-hole in the door slid

open, and a servant, an elderly man, sleek and respectable, looked out at

him.

Tignonville could scarcely speak for excitement. "Madame St. Lo?" he

muttered tremulously. "I come to her from her cousin the Comte de

Tavannes. Quick! quick! if you please. Open to me!"

"Monsieur is alone?"

"Yes! Yes!"

The man nodded gravely and slid back the bolts. He allowed M. de

Tignonville to enter, then with care he secured the door, and led the way

across a small square court, paved with red tiles and enclosed by the

house, but open above to the sunshine and the blue sky. A gallery which

ran round the upper floor looked on this court, in which a great quiet

reigned, broken only by the music of a fountain. A vine climbed on the

wooden pillars which supported the gallery, and, aspiring higher,

embraced the wide carved eaves, and even tapestried with green the three

gables that on each side of the court broke the skyline. The grapes hung

nearly ripe, and amid their clusters and the green lattice of their

foliage Tignonville's gaze sought eagerly but in vain the laughing eyes

and piquant face of his new mistress. For with the closing of the door,

and the passing from him of the horrors of the streets, he had entered,

as by magic, a new and smiling world; a world of tennis and roses, of

tinkling voices and women's wiles, a world which smacked of Florence and

the South, and love and life; a world which his late experiences had set

so far away from him, his memory of it seemed a dream. Now, as he drank

in its stillness and its fragrance, as he felt its safety and its luxury

lap him round once more, he sighed. And with that breath he rid himself

of much.

The servant led him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther side

of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible, withdrew. A

moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of a woman's skirt

as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to his cheeks. He

went a step nearer to the door, and his eyes grew bright.