Count Hannibal

The Norman showed his bearded visage a moment at the door.

"My lord's orders," he muttered sullenly. And he closed the door on

them.

She had a Huguenot's hatred of a cowl; and, in this crisis, her reasons

for fearing it. Her eyes blazed with indignation.

"Enough!" she cried, pointing, with a gesture of dismissal, to the door.

"Go back to him who sent you! If he will insult me, let him do it to my

face! If he will perjure himself, let him forswear himself in person.

Or, if you come on your own account," she continued, flinging prudence to

the winds, "as your brethren came to Philippa de Luns, to offer me the

choice you offered her, I give you her answer! If I had thought of

myself only, I had not lived so long! And rather than bear your presence

or hear your arguments--"

She came to a sudden, odd, quavering pause on the word; her lips remained

parted, she swayed an instant on her feet. The next moment Madame

Carlat, to whom the visitor had turned his shoulder, doubted her eyes,

for Mademoiselle was in the monk's arms!

"Clotilde! Clotilde!" he cried, and held her to him.

For the monk was M. de Tignonville! Under the cowl was the lover with

whom Mademoiselle's thoughts had been engaged. In this disguise, and

armed with Tavannes' note to Madame St. Lo--which the guards below knew

for Count Hannibal's hand, though they were unable to decipher the

contents--he had found no difficulty in making his way to her.

He had learned before he entered that Tavannes was abroad, and was aware,

therefore, that he ran little risk. But his betrothed, who knew nothing

of his adventures in the interval, saw in him one who came to her at the

greatest risk, across unnumbered perils, through streets swimming with

blood. And though she had never embraced him save in the crisis of the

massacre, though she had never called him by his Christian name, in the

joy of this meeting she abandoned herself to him, she clung to him

weeping, she forgot for the time his defection, and thought only of him

who had returned to her so gallantly, who brought into the room a breath

of Poitou, and the sea, and the old days, and the old life; and at the

sight of whom the horrors of the last two days fell from her--for the

moment.

And Madame Carlat wept also, and in the room was a sound of weeping. The

least moved was, for a certainty, M. de Tignonville himself, who, as we

know, had gone through much that day. But even his heart swelled, partly

with pride, partly with thankfulness that he had returned to one who

loved him so well. Fate had been kinder to him than he deserved; but he

need not confess that now. When he had brought off the coup which he

had in his mind, he would hasten to forget that he had entertained other

ideas.