ment 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.

Mademoiselle had been the first to be carried away; she was also the
first to recover herself.

"I had forgotten," she cried suddenly, "I had forgotten," and she wrested
herself from his embrace with violence, and stood panting, her face
white, her eyes affrighted. "I must not! And you--I had forgotten that
too! To be here, Monsieur, is the worst office you can do me. You must
go! Go, Monsieur, in mercy I beg of you, while it is possible. Every
moment you are here, every moment you spend in this house, I shudder."

"You need not fear for me," he said, in a tone of bravado. He did not
understand.

"I fea