The glow of hope which had transfigured her face faded slowly.

“It will not help,” she said, “if he find you here.”

“He will not!  Nor you!”

“How, Monsieur?”

“In a few minutes,” he explained—­he could not hide his exultation, “a message will come from the Arsenal in the name of Tavannes, bidding the monk he sent to you bring you to him.  A spoken message, corroborated by my presence, should suffice:  ’Bid the monk who is now with Mademoiselle,’ it will run, ’bring her to me at the Arsenal, and let four pikes guard them hither.’  When I begged M. de Biron to do this, he laughed.  ‘I can do better,’ he said.  ’They shall bring one of Count Hannibal’s gloves, which he left on my table.  Always supposing my rascals have done him no harm, which God forbid, for I am answerable.’”

Tignonville, delighted with the stratagem which the meeting with Biron had suggested, could see no flaw in it.  She could, and though she heard him to the end, no second glow of hope softened the lines of her features.  With a gesture full of dignity, which took in not only Madame Carlat and the waiting-woman who stood at the door, but the absent servants—­

“And what of these?” she said.  “What of these?  You forget them, Monsieur.  You do not think, you cannot have thought, that I would abandon them?  That I would leave them to such mercy as he, defeated, might extend to them?  No, you forgot them.”

He did not know what to answer, for the jealous eyes of the frightened waiting-woman, fierce with the fierceness of a hunted animal, were on him.  The Carlat and she had heard, could hear.  At last—­

“Better one than none!” he muttered, in a voice so low that if the servants caught his meaning it was but indistinctly.  “I have to think of you.”

“And I of them,” she answered firmly.  “Nor is that all.  Were they not here, it could not be.  My word is passed—­though a moment ago, Monsieur, in the joy of seeing you I forgot it.  And how,” she continued, “if I keep not my word, can I expect him to keep his?  Or how, if I am ready to break the bond, on this happening which I never expected, can I hold him to conditions which he loves as little—­as little as I love him?”

Her voice dropped piteously on the last words; her eyes, craving her lover’s pardon, sought his.  But rage, not pity or admiration, was the feeling roused in Tignonville’s breast.  He stood staring at her, struck dumb by folly so immense.  At last—­

“You cannot mean this,” he blurted out.  “You cannot mean, Mademoiselle, that you intend to stand on that!  To keep a promise wrung from you by force, by treachery, in the midst of such horrors as he and his have brought upon us!  It is inconceivable!”

She shook her head.  “I promised,” she said.

“You were forced to it.”

“But the promise saved our lives.”

“From murderers!  From assassins!” he protested.