Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: March 2, 2025
In which direction is it, from here?" "Westwards," she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with eagerness and emotion and hope. "Westwards, Monsieur on the sea. The causeway from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten hundred." "Westwards? And how far westwards?" Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness, the same anxiety, which spoke in hers.
Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth. A moment, and the main body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover the rear. The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the wood than the trees faded out of sight behind them.
Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight from they knew not what. To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these. On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage.
"You have taken them between you; and as I do not choose that you should pay, he will pay the price." If the discovery that Tignonville had fallen into her husband's hands had not sufficed to crush her, Count Hannibal's tone must have done so.
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?"
Then he got up slowly, reeling a little, "I thought it was the point," he muttered. "No, it was the pommel," Tavannes answered dryly. "It would not have served me to kill you. I could have done that ten times." Tignonville groaned, and, sitting down at the table, held the napkin to his aching head.
"Now the register, Monsieur," Maillard continued briskly; and waving him in the direction of a clerk, who sat at the end of the long table, having a book and a ink-horn before him, he turned to the next comer. Tignonville would fain have avoided the ordeal of the register, but the clerk's eye was on him.
"I will answer that question by another question," he replied. "How many are there in the house, my friend?" "You can count." Tavannes counted again. "Seven?" he said. Tignonville nodded impatiently. "Seven lives?" "Well?" "Well, Monsieur, you know the King's will?" "I can guess it," the other replied furiously. And he cursed the King, and the King's mother, calling her Jezebel.
The light was waning a little, the wicks of the candles were burning long; but neither noticed it or dared to remove his eyes from the other's. Their laboured breathing found an echo on the farther side of the door, but this again neither observed. "Well?" Count Hannibal said at last. "Are you coming?" "When I please," Tignonville answered; and he feinted but drew back.
"I am flattered!" But she did not advance, and gradually, light-headed as he was, he began to see that she looked at him with an odd closeness. And he took offence. "I say, Madame, I have come to you!" he repeated. "And you do not seem pleased!" She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly. "Oh yes," she said. "I am pleased, M. de Tignonville. It is what I intended.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking