Ay, why? For now a score of contingencies came into the young man's mind
and tortured him. Had Madame St. Lo withdrawn to safer quarters and
closed the house? Or, good Catholic as she was, had she given way to
panic, and determined to open to no one? Or was she ill? Or had she
perished in the general disorder? Or-And then, even as the men began to slink towards him, his heart leapt. He
heard a footstep heavy and slow move through the house. It came nearer
and nearer. A moment, and an iron-grated Judas-hole in the door slid
open, and a servant, an elderly man, sleek and respectable, looked out at
him.
Tignonville could scarcely speak for excitement. "Madame St. Lo?" he
muttered tremulously. "I come to her from her cousin the Comte de
Tavannes. Quick! quick! if you please. Open to me!"
"Monsieur is alone?"
"Yes! Yes!"
The man nodded gravely and slid back the bolts. He allowed M. de
Tignonville to enter, then with care he secured the door, and led the way
across a small square court, paved with red tiles and enclosed by the
house, but open above to the sunshine and the blue sky. A gallery which
ran round the upper floor looked on this court, in which a great quiet
reigned, broken only by the music of a fountain. A vine climbed on the
wooden pillars which supported the gallery, and, aspiring higher,
embraced the wide carved eaves, and even tapestried with green the three
gables that on each side of the court broke the skyline. The grapes hung
nearly ripe, and amid their clusters and the green lattice of their
foliage Tignonville's gaze sought eagerly but in vain the laughing eyes
and piquant face of his new mistress. For with the closing of the door,
and the passing from him of the horrors of the streets, he had entered,
as by magic, a new and smiling world; a world of tennis and roses, of
tinkling voices and women's wiles, a world which smacked of Florence and
the South, and love and life; a world which his late experiences had set
so far away from him, his memory of it seemed a dream. Now, as he drank
in its stillness and its fragrance, as he felt its safety and its luxury
lap him round once more, he sighed. And with that breath he rid himself
of much.
The servant led him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther side
of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible, withdrew. A
moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of a woman's skirt
as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to his cheeks. He
went a step nearer to the door, and his eyes grew bright.