, and her dark curls pushing
themselves in dusky confusion about her cheek. The Abbe John was the
only person at all uneasy. Yet it was not the distant dubious sounds
from the town which troubled him, nor yet the cries of the boatmen of
St. Victor dropping down under the bridge of Vienne, the premier arch of
which sprang immediately out by the gable of Dame Granier's house.

No, the Abbe John was uneasy because he wished to move his little
three-legged stool nearer to the black oaken settle at the corner of
which sat Claire Agnew.

The Leaguers might seize his person to make him a king--in default of
better. Well, he would keep out of their way. His cousin, the Bearnais,
would certainly give him a company in the best-ordered army in the
world. His other yet more distant cousin, Philip of Spain, would, if he
caught him, present him with a neat arrangement in yellow, with flames
and devils painted in red all over it. Then, all for the glory of God,
he would burn him alive because of consorting with the heretic.

Many careers were thus opening to the young man. But just at present,
and, indeed, ever since he had looked at her across the dead man,
stretched so starkly out among the themes and lectures on Professor
Anatole's Sorbonne table, John d'Albret had felt that his true call in
life was to minister to the happiness of Mistress Claire Agnew. And
incidentally, in so doing, to his own.

Of this purpose, of course, Mistress Claire was profoundly unconscious.
That was why she looked so steadily at the fire, and appeared to be
revolving great problems of state. But it is certain, all the same, that
no one else of all that company was deceived, not even sturdy Anthony
Arpajon, who so far forgot himself, being a widower and a Calvinist, as
to wink behind backs at Dame Granier when she was bringing up a new
armful of dried orchard prunings to help boil the pot.

"I for one would not sleep comfortably in the Duke of Guise's bed at
night," said the Professor sententiously. "I spoke to-day with that
brigand D'O, whose name is as short as his sword is long, also with
Guast, the man who goes about with his hand on the hilt of his dagger,
familiarly, as if it were a whistle to call his scent-dogs to heel. No,
I thank God I am but a poor professor of the Sorbonne--and even so,
displaced. Not for ten thousand shields would I sleep in the Duke's
bed."

"Perhaps that is the reason," suggested Jean-aux-Choux darkly, "why he
prefer