chamber looking over the square from the first floor, in which supper was being set for them, the news had flown through the length and breadth of Angers that for this night the danger was past. The hawk had come to Angers, and lo! it was a dove.
Count Hannibal strode to one of the open windows and looked out. In the room, which was well lighted, were people of the house, going to and fro, setting out the table; to Madame, standing beside the hearth—which held its summer dressing of green boughs—while her woman held water for her to wash, the scene recalled with painful vividness the meal at which she had been present on the morning of the St. Bartholomew—the meal which had ushered in her troubles. Naturally her eyes went to her husband, her mind to the horror in which she had held him then; and with a kind of shock—perhaps because the last few minutes had shown him in a new light—she compared her old opinion of him with that which, much as she feared him, she now entertained.
This afternoon, if ever, within the last few hours, if at all, he had acted in a way to justify that horror and that opinion. He had treated her—brutally; he had insulted and threatened her, had almost struck her. And yet—and yet Madame felt that she had moved so far from the point which she had once occupied that the old attitude was hard to understand. Hardly could she believe that it was on this man, much as she still dreaded him, that she had looked with those feelings of repulsion.
She was still gazing at him with eyes which strove to see two men in one, when he turned from the window. Absorbed in thought, she had forgotten her occupation, and stood, the towel suspended in her half-dried hands. Before she knew what he was doing he was at her side; he bade the woman hold the bowl, and he rinsed his hands. Then he turned, and without looking at the Countess, he
