did not trust her entirely. "Do not wear them on your return,"
she had said and that was odd; although I could not yet believe
that she was such a siren as Father Pierre had warned us of,
telling tales from old poets. Yet I doubted, shuddering as I did
so. Her companionship with that vile priest, her strange
eagerness to secure Pavannes' return, her mysterious directions
to me, her anxiety to take her sister home--home, where she would
be exposed to danger, as being in a known Huguenot's house--
these things pointed to but one conclusion; still that one was so
horrible that I would not, even while I doubted and distrusted
her, I would not, I could not accept it. I put it from me, and
refused to believe it, although during the rest of that night it
kept coming back to me and knocking for admission at my brain.

All this flashed through my mind while I was fixing on Pavannes'
badges. Not that I lost time about it, for from the moment I
grasped the position as he conceived it, every minute we had
wasted on explanations seemed to me an hour. I reproached myself
for having forgotten even for an instant that which had brought
us to town--the rescue of Kit's lover. We had small chance now
of reaching him in time, misled as we had been by this miserable
mistake in identity. If my companion's fears were well founded,
Louis would fall in the general massacre of the Huguenots,
probably before we could reach him. If ill-founded, still we had
small reason to hope. Bezers' vengeance would not wait. I knew
him too well to think it. A Guise might spare his foe, but the
Vidame--the Vidame never! We had warned Madame de Pavannes it
was true; but that abnormal exercise of benevolence could only, I
cynically thought, have the more exasperated the devil within
him, which now would be ravening like a dog disappointed of its