ll lighted, were people of the house, going to and fro,
setting out the table; to Madame, standing beside the hearth--which held
its summer dressing of green boughs--while her woman held water for her
to wash, the scene recalled with painful vividness the meal at which she
had been present on the morning of the St. Bartholomew--the meal which
had ushered in her troubles. Naturally her eyes went to her husband, her
mind to the horror in which she had held him then; and with a kind of
shock--perhaps because the last few minutes had shown him in a new
light--she compared her old opinion of him with that which, much as she
feared him, she now entertained.

This afternoon, if ever, within the last few hours, if at all, he had
acted in a way to justify that horror and that opinion. He had treated
her--brutally; he had insulted and threatened her, had almost struck her.
And yet--and yet Madame felt that she had moved so far from the point
which she had once occupied that the old attitude was hard to understand.
Hardly could she believe that it was on this man, much as she still
dreaded him, that she had looked with those feelings of repulsion.

She was still gazing at him with eyes which strove to see two men in one,
when he turned from the window. Absorbed in thought, she had forgotten
her occupation, and stood, the towel suspended in her half-dried hands.
Before she knew what he was doing he was at her side; he bade the woman
hold the bowl, and he rinsed his hands. Then he turned, and without
looking at the Countess, he dried his hands on the farther end of the
towel which she was still using.

She blushed faintly. A something in the act, more intimate and more
familiar than had ever marked their intercourse, set her blood running
strangely. When he turned away and bade Bigot unbuckle his
spur-leathers, she stepped forward.

"I will do it!" she murmured, acting on a sudden and unaccountable
impulse. And as she knelt, she shook her hair about her face to hide its
colour.

"Nay, Madame, but you will soil your fingers!" he said coldly.

"Permit me," she muttered half coherently. And though her fingers shook,
she pursued and performed her task.

When she rose he thanked her; and then the devil in the man, or the
Nemesis he had provoked when he took her by force from another--the
Nemesis of jealousy, drove him to spoil all.

"And for whose sake, Madame?" he added, with a jeer; "mine or M. de
Tignonville's?" And