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.”

CHAPTER XI.  A BARGAIN.

It is the wont of the sex to snatch at an ell where an inch is offered, and to press an advantage in circumstances in which a man, acknowledging the claims of generosity, scruples to ask for more.  The habit, now ingrained, may have sprung from long dependence on the male, and is one which a hundred instances, from the time of Judith downwards, prove to be at its strongest where the need is greatest.

When Mademoiselle de Vrillac came out of the hour-long swoon into which her lover’s defection had cast her, the expectation of the worst was so strong upon her that she could not at once credit the respite which Madame Carlat hastened to announce.  She could not believe that she still lay safe, in her own room above stairs; that she was in the care of her own servants, and that the chamber held no presence more hateful than that of the good woman who sat weeping beside her.

As was to be expected, she came to herself sighing and shuddering, trembling with nervous exhaustion.  She looked for him, as soon as she looked for any; and even when she had seen the door locked and double-locked, she doubted—­doubted, and shook and hid herself in the hangings of the bed.  The noise of the riot and rapine which prevailed in the city, and which reached the ear even in that locked room—­and although the window, of paper, with an upper pane of glass, looked into a courtyard—­was enough to drive the blood from a woman’s cheeks.  But it was fear of the house, not of the street, fear from within, not from without, which impelled the girl into the darkest corner and shook her wits.  She could not believe that even this short respite was hers, until she had repeatedly heard the fact confirmed at Madame Carlat’s mouth.

“You are deceiving me!” she cried more than once.  And each time she started up in fresh terror.  “He never said that he would not return until to-morrow!”

“He did, my lamb, he did!” the old woman answered with tears.  “Would I deceive you?”

“He said he would not return?”

“He said he would not return until to-morrow.  You had until to-morrow, he said.”

“And then?”

“He would come and bring the priest with him,” Madame Carlat replied sorrowfully.

“The priest?  To-morrow!” Mademoiselle cried.  “The priest!” and she crouched anew with hot eyes behind the hangings of the bed, and, shivering, hid her face.