"Give it me," he said.
She let him seize it the while she shrugged her shoulders. "It's your
affair, not mine," she said. "See it if you like, and keep it if you
like. Cousin Hannibal wastes few words."
That was true, for the paper contained but a dozen or fifteen words, and
an initial by way of signature.
"I may need your shaveling to-morrow afternoon. Send him, and
Tignonville in safeguard if he come.--H."
"I can guess what use he has for a priest," she said. "It is not to
confess him, I warrant. It's long, I fear, since Hannibal told his
beads."
M. de Tignonville swore. "I would I had the confessing of him!" he said
between his teeth.
She clapped her hands in glee. "Why should you not?" she cried. "Why
should you not? 'Tis time yet, since I am to send to-day and have not
sent. Will you be the shaveling to go confess or marry him?" And she
laughed recklessly. "Will you, M. de Tignonville? The cowl will mask
you as well as another, and pass you through the streets better than a
cut sleeve. He will have both his wishes, lover and clerk in one then.
And it will be pull monk, pull Hannibal with a vengeance."
Tignonville gazed at her, and as he gazed courage and hope awoke in his
eyes. What if, after all, he could undo the past? What if, after all,
he could retrace the false step he had taken, and place himself again
where he had been--by her side?
"If you meant it!" he exclaimed, his breath coming fast. "If you only
meant what you say, Madame."
"If?" she answered, opening her eyes. "And why should I not mean it?"
"Because," he replied slowly, "cowl or no cowl, when I meet your cousin--"
"'Twill go hard with him?" she cried, with a mocking laugh. "And you
think I fear for him. That is it, is it?"
He nodded.
"I fear just so much for him!" she retorted with contempt. "Just so
much!" And coming a step nearer to Tignonville she snapped her small
white fingers under his nose. "Do you see? No, M. de Tignonville," she
continued, "you do not know Count Hannibal if you think that he fears, or
that any fear for him. If you will beard the lion in his den, the risk
will be yours, not his!"
The young man's face glowed. "I take the risk!" he cried. "And I thank
you for the chance; that, Madame, whatever betide. But--"
"But what?" she asked, seeing that he hesitated and that his face fell.
"If he afterwards learn that you have played him a trick," he said, "will
he not punish you?"
"Punish me?"
He nodded.
Madame laughed her high disdain. "You do not yet know Hannibal de
Tavannes," she said. "He does not war with women."