"Is with Mistress Marie, terrified almost to death, poor child. She has been crouching all day beside her, hiding her face in her gown. But where were you?"
"At the Sorbonne," Felix replied, in a whisper.
"Ah!" the other exclaimed, something of hidden meaning in his tone. "I would not tell her that, if I were you. I feared it was so. But let us go upstairs."
They went up; the stranger following, with more than one stumble by the way. At the head of the staircase the clerk opened a door and preceded them into a low-roofed panelled room, plainly but solidly furnished, and lighted by a small hanging lamp of silver. A round oak table on six curiously turned legs stood in the middle, and on it some food was laid. A high-backed chair, before which a sheep-skin rug was spread, and two or three stools, made up, with a great oak chest, the furniture of the room.
The stranger turned from scrutinizing his surroundings, and stood at gaze. Another door had opened silently; he saw framed in the doorway and relieved by the lamplight against the darkness of the outer room the face and figure of a tall girl; doubtless the one whom he had seen at the window. A moment she stood pointing at them with her hand, her face white—and whiter in seeming by reason of the black hair which fell round it; her eyes were dilated, the neckband of her dark red gown was torn open that she might have air. "A Provençal!" the intruder murmured to himself. "Beautiful and a tigress."
At any rate, for the moment, beside herself. "So you have come at last!" she said, panting, glaring at Felix with scorn, passionate scorn in word and gesture. "Where were you while these slaves of yours did your bidding? At the Sorbonne with the black crows! Thinking out fresh work for them? Or dallying with your Normandy sweetheart?"
"Hush!" he said, lowering his eyes, and visibly quailing before her. "There is a stranger here."
"There have been many strangers here to-day!" she retorted with undiminished bitterness. "Hush, you say? Nay, but I will not be silent for you, for any! They may tear me limb from limb, but I will accuse them of this murder before God's throne. Coward! Parricide! Do you think I will ask mercy from them? Come, look on your work! See what the League have done—your holy League!—while you sat plotting with the black crows!"
She pointed into the dark room behind her, and the movement disclosed a younger girl clinging to her skirts, and weeping silently. "Come here, Susanne," Felix said; he had turned pale and red and shifted from one foot to another, under the lash of the elder girl's scorn. "Your sister is not herself. You do no good, Marie, staying in there. See, you are both trembling with cold."
"With cold?" was the fierce rejoinder. "Then do you warm yourselves! Sit down and eat and drink and be comfortable and forget him! But I will not eat nor drink while he hangs there! Shame, Felix Portail! Shame! Have you arms and hands, and will let your father hang before his own door?"