In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man, fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his eyes.  And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St. Agnes’s Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried with the best Catholic of them all, “Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!” Nay, some such words did pass his lips.

For the man before him turned halfway in his saddle.  “What?” he asked.

But the Huguenot did not explain.

CHAPTER XXIV.  AT THE KING’S INN.

The Countess sat up in the darkness of the chamber.  She had writhed since noon under the stings of remorse; she could bear them no longer.  The slow declension of the day, the evening light, the signs of coming tempest which had driven her company to the shelter of the inn at the crossroads, all had racked her, by reminding her that the hours were flying, and that soon the fault she had committed would be irreparable.  One impulsive attempt to redeem it she had made; but it had failed, and, by rendering her suspect, had made reparation more difficult.  Still, by daylight it had seemed possible to rest content with the trial made; not so now, when night had fallen, and the cries of little children and the haggard eyes of mothers peopled the darkness of her chamber.  She sat up, and listened with throbbing temples.

To shut out the lightning which played at intervals across the heavens, Madame St. Lo, who shared the room, had covered the window with a cloak; and the place was dark.  To exclude the dull roll of the thunder was less easy, for the night was oppressively hot, and behind the cloak the casement was open.  Gradually, too, another sound, the hissing fall of heavy rain, began to make itself heard, and to mingle with the regular breathing which proved that Madame St. Lo slept.

Assured of this fact, the Countess presently heaved a sigh, and slipped from the bed.  She groped in the darkness for her cloak, found it, and donned it over her night gear.  Then, taking her bearings by her bed, which stood with its head to the window and its foot to the entrance, she felt her way across the floor to the door, and after passing her hands a dozen times over every part of it, she found the latch, and raised it.  The door creaked, as she pulled it open, and she stood arrested; but the sound went no farther, for the roofed gallery outside, which looked by two windows on the courtyard, was full of outdoor noises, the rushing of rain and the running of spouts and eaves.  One of the windows stood wide, admitting the rain and wind, and as she paused, holding the door open, the draught blew the cloak from her.  She stepped out quickly and shut the door behind her.  On her left was the blind end of the passage; she turned to the right.  She took one step into the darkness and stood motionless.  Beside her, within a few feet of her, some one had moved, with a dull sound as of a boot on wood; a sound so near her that she held her breath, and pressed herself against the wall.