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.