"
She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,--with my
fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,--and on the threshold
turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a
gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door
shut again.
XV
_My Lord Mayenne._
I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next
second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it.
"What--" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line
of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on
account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and
she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something
else--a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. Into the
council-room came a man carrying a lighted taper. It was Mayenne.
Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at my feet.
I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my hand in a
sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.
Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like one just
roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted the
three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself with his
back to us, pulling about some papers.
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