roving eyes and haggard face, and the four figures, posed apart in the
fuller light of the upper half of the Chamber. Then the circle of
courtiers came together before her, and she sat back on her stool. A
fluttering, long-drawn sigh escaped her. Now, if she could slip out and
make her escape! Now--she looked round. She was not far from the door;
to withdraw seemed easy. But a staring, whispering knot of gentlemen and
pages blocked the way; and the girl, ignorant of the etiquette of the
Court, and with no more than a week's experience of Paris, had not the
courage to rise and pass alone through the group.

She had come to the Louvre this Saturday evening under the wing of Madame
d'Yverne, her _fiance's_ cousin. By ill-hap Madame had been summoned to
the Princess Dowager's closet, and perforce had left her. Still,
Mademoiselle had her betrothed, and in his charge had sat herself down to
wait, nothing loth, in the great gallery, where all was bustle and gaiety
and entertainment. For this, the seventh day of the fetes, held to
celebrate the marriage of the King of Navarre and Charles's sister--a
marriage which was to reconcile the two factions of the Huguenots and the
Catholics, so long at war--saw the Louvre as gay, as full, and as lively
as the first of the fete days had found it; and in the humours of the
throng, in the ceaseless passage of masks and maids of honour, guards and
bishops, Swiss in the black, white, and green of Anjou, and Huguenot
nobles in more sombre habits, the country-bred girl had found recreation
and to spare. Until gradually the evening had worn away and she had
begun to feel nervous; and M. de Tignonville, her betrothed, placing her
in the embrasure of a window, had gone to seek Madame.

She had waited for a time without much misgiving; expecting each moment
to see him return. He would be back before she could count a hundred; he
would be back before she could number the leagues that separated her from