more? And yet--you want her!"

"She is more to me," Tignonville answered.

"Is she?" the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning. "Is she? But
we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would rise.
Enough for you that I _do_ want her. Enough for you that I _will_ have
her. She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de Tavannes--or
I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!"

"Ah, God!" she moaned. "The willing wife!"

"Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife," he answered sternly. "Or no man's
wife!"




CHAPTER VI. WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?


In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than
the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into
the Rue St. Honore; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder
than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving masses the
dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St.
Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in
its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the
stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in
twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts,