beginning with me and ending with Croisette, as was becoming.
Afterwards Catherine threw her handkerchief over her face--she was
crying--and we three sat down, Turkish fashion, just where we were, and
said "Oh, Kit!" very softly.

But presently Croisette had something to add. "What will the Wolf
say?" he whispered to me.

"Ah! To be sure!" I exclaimed aloud. I had been thinking of myself
before; but this opened quite another window. "What will the Vidame
say, Kit?"

She dropped her kerchief from her face, and turned so pale that I was
sorry I had spoken--apart from the kick Croisette gave me. "Is M. de
Bezers at his house?" she asked anxiously.

"Yes," Croisette answered. "He came in last night from St. Antonin,
with very small attendance."

The news seemed to set her fears at rest instead of augmenting them as
I should have expected. I suppose they were rather for Louis de
Pavannes, than for herself. Not unnaturally, too, for even the Wolf
could scarcely have found it in his heart to hurt our cousin. Her
slight willowy figure, her pale oval face and gentle brown eyes, her
pleasant voice, her kindness, seemed to us boys and in those days, to
sum up all that was womanly. We could not remember, not even Croisette
the youngest of us--who was seventeen, a year junior to Marie and
myself--we were twins--the time when we had not been in love with her.

But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded
seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday
stillness of that afternoon. It was the summer of 1572. The great
peace, it will be remembered, between the Catholics and the Huguenots
had not long been declared; the peace which in a day or two was to be
solemnized, and, as most Frenchmen hoped, to be cemented by the
marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois, the King's
sister. The Vicomte de Caylus, Catherine's father and our guardian,
was one of the governors appointed to see the peace enforced; the
respect in which he was held by both parties--he was a Catholic, but no
bigot, God rest his soul!--recommending him for this employment. He
had therefore gone a week or two before to Bayonne, his province. Most
of our neighbours in Quercy were likewise from home, having gone to
Paris to be witnesses on one side or the other of the royal wedding.
And consequently we young people, not greatly checked by the presence
of good-natured, sleepy Madame Claude, Catherine'