nes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a mass of
tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of which rose
the screams of a creature in torture. So terrible were the sounds that
Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and even the iron
heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.

For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled.

"You'll join us, I think?" he said, with an undisguised sneer. "Then,
after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless the table
is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you, Monsieur, if you
please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this
house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home! Now, we have changed
places."

Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked in
his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion
along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had
seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed. A
dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment. What the
house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the
table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which
extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the
height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been
removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers. To such eyes of
passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming
weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout
Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange
indeed!

To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a
dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who
dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with
blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a
corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of
waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.

When he did speak it was to count the servants. "One, two, three, four,
five," he said. "And two of them women. Mademoiselle is but poorly
attended. Are there not"--and he turned to her--"some lacking?"

The girl opened her lips twice, but no sound issued. The third time--

"Two went out," she muttered in a hoarse, strangled voice, "and have not
returned."

"And have