prevailed in the city, and which reached the ear even in that locked room—and although the window, of paper, with an upper pane of glass, looked into a courtyard—was enough to drive the blood from a woman’s cheeks. But it was fear of the house, not of the street, fear from within, not from without, which impelled the girl into the darkest corner and shook her wits. She could not believe that even this short respite was hers, until she had repeatedly heard the fact confirmed at Madame Carlat’s mouth.
“You are deceiving me!” she cried more than once. And each time she started up in fresh terror. “He never said that he would not return until to-morrow!”
“He did, my lamb, he did!” the old woman answered with tears. “Would I deceive you?”
“He said he would not return?”
“He said he would not return until to-morrow. You had until to-morrow, he said.”
“And then?”
“He would come and bring the priest with him,” Madame Carlat replied sorrowfully.
“The priest? To-morrow!” Mademoiselle cried. “The priest!” and she crouched anew with hot eyes behind the hangings of the bed, and, shivering, hid her face.
But this for a time only. As soon as she had made certain of the respite, and that she had until the morrow, her courage rose, and with it the instinct of which mention has been made. Count Hannibal had granted a respite; short as it was, and no more than the barest humanity required, to grant one at all was not the act of the mere butcher who holds the trembling lamb, unresisting, in his hands. It was an act—no more, again be it said, than humanity required—and yet an act which bespoke an expectation of some return, of some correlative advantage. It was not in the part of the mere brigand. Something had been granted. Something short of the utmost in the
