"They are eating in the lodge by the door."
"Ha! And they cannot see the other room from there?"
Javette nodded. Her tale told, she seemed to be unable to add a word. Mademoiselle, who knew her for a craven, wondered that she had found courage either to note what she had or to bring the news. But as Providence had been so good to them as to put it into this woman's head to act as she had, it behoved them to use the opportunity--the last, the very last opportunity they might have.
She turned to Tignonville. "Oh, go!" she cried feverishly. "Go, I beg! Go now, monsieur! The greatest kindness you can do me is to place yourself as quickly as possible beyond his reach." A faint colour, the flush of hope, had returned to her cheeks. Her eyes glittered.
"Right, Mademoiselle!" he cried, obedient for once. "I go! And do you be of good courage." He held her hand an instant, then, moving to the door, he opened it and listened. They all pressed behind him to hear. A murmur of voices, low and distant, mounted the staircase and bore out the girl's tale; apart from this the house was silent. Tignonville cast a last look at Mademoiselle, and, with a gesture of farewell, glided a-tiptoe to the stairs and began to descend, his face hidden in his cowl. They watched him reach the angle of the staircase, they watched him vanish beyond it; and still they listened, looking at one another when a board creaked or the voices below were hushed for a moment.
CHAPTER XVII.
[THE DUEL.]
At the foot of the staircase Tignonville paused. The droning Norman voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before him on the left. He caught a jest, the coarse chuckling laughter which attended it, and the gurgle of applause which followed; and he knew that at any moment one of the men might step out and discover him. Fortunately the door of the room with the shattered window was almost within reach of his hand on the right side of the passage, and he stepped softly to it. He stood an instant hesitating, his hand on the latch; then, alarmed by a movement in the guard-room, as if some were rising, he pushed the door in a panic, slid into the room, and shut the door behind him. He was safe, and he had made no noise; but at the table, at supper, with his back to him and his face to the partly closed window, sat Count Hannibal!
The young man's heart stood still. For a long minute he gazed at the Count's back, spellbound and unable to stir. Then, as Tavannes ate on without looking round, he began to take courage. Possibly he had entered so quietly that he had not been heard, or possibly his entrance was taken for that of a servant. In either case, there was a chance that he might retire after the same fashion; and he had actually raised the latch, and was drawing the door to him with infinite precaution, when Tavannes' voice struck him, as it were, in the face.
"Pray do not admit the draught, M. de Tignonville," he said, without looking round. "In your cowl you do not feel it, but it is otherwise with me."