A spoken message, corroborated by
my presence, should suffice: '_Bid the monk who is now with
Mademoiselle_,' it will run, '_bring her to me at the Arsenal, and let
four pikes guard them hither_.' When I begged M. de Biron to do this, he
laughed. 'I can do better,' he said. 'They shall bring one of Count
Hannibal's gloves, which he left on my table. Always supposing my
rascals have done him no harm, which God forbid, for I am answerable.'"
Tignonville, delighted with the stratagem which the meeting with Biron
had suggested, could see no flaw in it. She could, and though she heard
him to the end, no second glow of hope softened the lines of her
features. With a gesture full of dignity, which took in not only Madame
Carlat and the waiting-woman who stood at the door, but the absent
servants--
"And what of these?" she said. "What of these? You forget them,
Monsieur. You do not think, you cannot have thought, that I would
abandon them? That I would leave them to such mercy as he, defeated,
might extend to them? No, you forgot them."
He did not know what to answer, for the jealous eyes of the frightened
waiting-woman, fierce with the fierceness of a hunted animal, were on
him. The Carlat and she had heard, could hear. At last--
"Better one than none!" he muttered, in a voice so low that if the
servants caught his meaning it was but indistinctly.
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