“You will not harm him?” he muttered.

“He shall go safe,” Count Hannibal replied gravely.

“And—­” he fought a moment with his pride, then blurted out the words, “you will not tell her—­that it was through me—­you found him?”

“I will not,” Tavannes answered in the same tone.  He stooped and picked up the other’s robe and cowl, which had fallen from a chair—­so that as he spoke his eyes were averted.  “She shall never know through me,” he said.

And Tignonville, his face hidden in his hands, told him.

CHAPTER XVIII.  ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT.

Little by little—­while they fought below—­the gloom had thickened, and night had fallen in the room above.  But Mademoiselle would not have candles brought.  Seated in the darkness, on the uppermost step of the stairs, her hands clasped about her knees, she listened and listened, as if by that action she could avert misfortune; or as if, by going so far forward to meet it, she could turn aside the worst.  The women shivering in the darkness about her would fain have struck a light and drawn her back into the room, for they felt safer there.  But she was not to be moved.  The laughter and chatter of the men in the guard-room, the coming and going of Bigot as he passed, below but out of sight, had no terrors for her; nay, she breathed more freely on the bare open landing of the staircase than in the close confines of a room which her fears made hateful to her.  Here at least she could listen, her face unseen; and listening she bore the suspense more easily.

A turn in the staircase, with the noise which proceeded from the guard-room, rendered it difficult to hear what happened in the closed room below.  But she thought that if an alarm were raised there she must hear it; and as the moments passed and nothing happened, she began to feel confident that her lover had made good his escape by the window.

Presently she got a fright.  Three or four men came from the guard-room and went, as it seemed to her, to the door of the room with the shattered casement.  She told herself that she had rejoiced too soon, and her heart stood still.  She waited for a rush of feet, a cry, a struggle.  But except an uncertain muffled sound which lasted for some minutes, and was followed by a dull shock, she heard nothing more.  And presently the men went back whispering, the noise in the guard-room which had been partially hushed broke forth anew, and perplexed but relieved she breathed again.  Surely he had escaped by this time.  Surely by this time he was far away, in the Arsenal, or in some place of refuge!  And she might take courage, and feel that for this day the peril was overpast.

“Mademoiselle will have the lights now?” one of the women ventured.