Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/192

180 Mademoiselle, before the King of Navarre. I believe that you were there.”

For a moment she stared at him in silence, her lips parted. Then she laughed, a laugh which set the teeth on edge.

“Oh, he is clever!” she cried. “He has the wit of the priests! Or the devil! But you come too late, Monsieur! You come too late! The bird has flown.”

“Mademoiselle”

“I tell you the bird has flown!” she repeated vehemently. And her laugh of joyless triumph rang through the room. “He is clever, but I have outwitted him! I have”

She paused and stared about her wildly, struck by the silence; struck too by something solemn, something pitiful in the faces that were turned on her. And her lip began to quiver.

“What?” she muttered. “Why do you look at me so? He has not”—she turned from one to another—“he has not been taken?”

“M. Tignonville?”

She nodded.

“He is below.”

“Ah!” she said.

They expected to see her break down, perhaps to see her fall. But she only groped blindly for a chair and sat. And for a moment there was silence in the room. It was the Huguenot minister who broke it in a tone formal and solemn.

“Listen, all present!” he said slowly. “The ways of God are past finding out. For two days in the midst of great perils I have been preserved by His hand and fed by His bounty, and I am told that I shall live if, in this matter, I do the will of those who hold me in their power. But be assured—and hearken all,” he continued, lowering his voice to a sterner note. “Rather than marry this