“I pray your prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more of him,” Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she herself had started.  “He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but all this solemn prating about him is duller than a sermon.”  She raised a dainty hand behind which to yawn audibly.  “Come, mesdames, let us get back to our purchases.  Ma foi! it’s lucky these jeweller folk know no French.”

M. Etienne was himself again, all smiles and quick pleasantries.  I slipped off to my post in the background, trying to get out of the eye of Mlle. de Tavanne, who had been staring at me the last five minutes in a way that made my goose-flesh rise, so suspicious, so probing, was it.  On my retreat she did indeed move her gaze from me, but only to watch M. le Comte as a hound watches a thicket.  It was a miracle that none had pounced on him before, so reckless had he been.  I perceived with sickening certainty that Mlle. de Tavanne had guessed something amiss.  She fairly bristled with suspicion, with knowledge.  I waited from breathless moment to moment for announcement.  There was nothing to be done; she held us in the hollow of her hand.  We could not flee, we could not fight.  We could do nothing but wait quietly till she spoke, and then submit quietly to arrest; later, most like, to death.

Minute followed minute, and still she did not speak.  Hope flowed back to me again; perhaps, after all, we might escape.  I wondered how high were the windows from the ground.

As I stole across the room to see, Mlle. de Tavanne detached herself from the group and glided unnoticed out of the door.

It was thirty feet to the stones below—­sure death that way.  But she had given us a respite; something might yet be done.  I seized M. Etienne’s arm in a grip that should tell him how serious was our pass.  Remembering, for a marvel, my foreign tongue, I bespoke him: 

“Brother, it grows late.  We must go.  It will soon be dark.  We must go now—­now!”

He turned on me with an impatient frown, but before he could answer, Mme. de Montpensier cried, with a laugh: 

“And do you fear the dark, wench?  Marry, you look as if you could take care of yourself.”

“Nay, madame,” I protested, “but the box.  Come, Giovanni.  If we linger, we may be robbed in the dark streets.”

“Why, my sister, where are your manners?” he retorted, striving to shake me off.  “The ladies have not yet dismissed me.”

“We shall be robbed of the box,” I persisted; “and the night air is bad for your health, my Nino.  If you stay longer you will have trouble in the throat.”

He looked at me hard.  I tried to make my eyes tell him that my fear was no vague one of the streets, that his throat was in peril here and now.  He understood; he cried with merry laughter to Mme. de Montpensier: 

“Pray excuse her lack of manners, duchessa.  I know what moves the maid.  I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells also a beautiful young captain—­beautiful as the day.  It’s little of his time he spends at home, but we have observed that he comes every evening to array himself grandly for supper at some one’s palace.  We count our day lost an we cannot meet him, by accident, on the stairs.”