He who held the lanthorn raised it, and the five glared at her and she at them.
Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst from her lips.
The nearest man, he who held the lanthorn high that he might view her, was Tignonville, was her lover! "_Mon Dieu_!" she whispered.

"What is it?
What is it ?" Then, not till then, did he know her.

Until then the light of the lanthorn had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy phantom which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious terror.

But they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream, Tignonville came forward.
The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct rather than upon reason.

The girl never knew why she acted as she did; why she asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no remonstrances; why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she put the packet into his hands.
He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the hand which held his bare blade.