to crave his mercy.

Count Hannibal smiled.

"You do not believe me?"

"No," he said. And then, in a tone which chilled her, "If I did believe
you," he continued, "I should still punish him!" She was broken; but he
would see if he could not break her further. He would try if there were
no weak spot in her armour. He would rack her now, since in the end she
must go free. "Understand, Madame," he continued in his harshest tone,
"I have had enough of your lover. He has crossed my path too often. You
are my wife, I am your husband. In a day or two there shall be an end of
this farce and of him."

"He did not take them!" she wailed, her face sinking lower on her breast.
"He did not take them! Have mercy!"

"Any way, Madame, they are gone!" Tavannes answered. "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. The
shoot of new life which had raised its head after those dreadful days in
Paris, and--for she was young--had supported her under the weight which
the peril of Angers had cast on her shoulders, died, withered under the
heel of his brutality. The pride which had supported her, which had won
Tavannes' admiration and exacted his respect, sank, as she sank herself,
bowed to her horse's neck, weeping bitter tears before him. She
abandoned herself to her misery, as she had once abandoned herself in the
upper room in Paris.

And he looked at her. He had willed to crush her; he had his will, and
he was not satisfied. He had bowed her so low that his magnanimity would
now have its full effect, would shine as the sun into a dark world; and
yet he was not happy. He could look forward to the morrow, and say, "She
will understand me, she will know me!" and, lo, the thought that she wept
for her lover stabbed him, and stabbed him anew; and he thought, "Rather
would she death from him, than life from me! Though I give her creation,
it will not alter her! Though I strike the stars with my head, it is he
who fills her world."

The thought spurred him to further cruelty, impelled him to try if,
prostrate as she was, he could not draw a prayer from her.

"You don't ask after him?" he scoffed. "He may be before or behind? Or
wounded or well? Would you not know, Madame? And what message he sent
you? And what he fea