One of the frightened women--it was Mademoiselle's tiring-maid, a girl called Javette--made a movement, as if to throw herself at her mistress's feet. Tignonville drove her to her place with a word. He turned to Count Hannibal. "But, M. le Comte," he said, "you must be mad! Mad, to wish to marry her in this way! You do not love her. You do not want her. What is she to you more than other women?" "What is she to you more than other women?" Tavannes retorted, in a tone so sharp and incisive that Tignonville started, and a faint touch of colour crept into the wan cheek of the girl, who sat between them, the prize of the contest. "What is she more to you than other women? Is she more? And yet--you want her!" "She is more to me," Tignonville answered. "Is she?" the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning. "Is she? But we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would rise. Enough for you that I _do_ want her. Enough for you that I _will_ have her. She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de Tavannes--or I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!" "Ah, God!" she moaned. "The willing wife!" "Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife," he answered sternly. "Or no man's wife!" CHAPTER VI. WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES? In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into the Rue St. Honore; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving masses the dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St. Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts, heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn was growing, the sun was about to rise. Soon the day would be here, giving up the lurking fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, and stamping with legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.