Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France by Stanley John Weyman
page 80 of 411 (19%)
page 80 of 411 (19%)
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"Yes, together. But have you the courage?" "The courage?" she cried, a brave smile lighting the whiteness of her face. "The courage were needed to live. The courage were needed to do that. I am ready, quite ready. It can be no sin! To live with that in front of me were the sin! Come!" For the moment she had forgotten her people, her promise, all! It seemed to her that death would absolve her from all. "Come!" He moved with her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at the gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return eastward along the Rue St. Honore, was nearing the house. He stood, his arm supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window. Suddenly he stooped, his face hardly less white than hers: their eyes met; he would have kissed her. She did not withdraw from his arm, but she drew back her face, her eyes half shut. "No!" she murmured. "No! While I live I am his. But we die together, Tignonville! We die together. It will not last long, will it? And afterwards--" She did not finish the sentence, but her lips moved in prayer, and over her features came a far-away look; such a look as that which on the face of another Huguenot lady, Philippa de Luns--vilely done to death in the Place Maubert fourteen years before--silenced the ribald jests of the lowest rabble in the world. An hour or two earlier, awed by the |
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