He never forgot the glare of rage the angry woman fixed upon him for a
moment.
Her eyes fairly blazed as she hissed, vindictively:
"You have made your choice, and mine is the last human face you will
look upon. A few days of isolation in this dreary chamber, without food
or drink, and you will go mad with horror and die of starvation. Adieu,
monsieur. I wish you _bon voyage_ to Hades!"
She made him a mocking courtesy, and swept to the door, tearing it
open with such impetuous haste that the listener outside had no time
to step aside, only to spring up wildly and confront the angry woman,
who immediately uttered a shriek of horror and fled up the narrow
stair-way, disappearing through the secret door in an incredibly short
space of time.
In the darkness of the narrow passage she had taken the pale-faced,
wild-eyed girl for a visitant from the other world, and had fled in
fear and terror from the supposed ghostly presence.
In her terror she had forgotten to shut the door upon Van Zandt, and
with starting eyes he witnessed the strange scene. For an instant he
fancied, like Mme. Lorraine, that it was a spirit standing there in the
gloom of the narrow passage, with face and form like that of the dead
little Mlle. Nobody. Then reason came to his aid. He sprung from the
sofa, and just as the secret door shut behind the frightened madame, he
caught the girl's cold hand and drew her into the room.
"Oh, my little ma'amselle! So that wicked woman lied when she told me
that you were dead!" he exclaimed.
She answered, vivaciously:
"No; for I have been dead and buried since I saw you, Monsieur Van
Zandt. Don't you see that Madame Lorraine took me for a ghost? It was
very fortunate for me, was it not?" and soft, sweet trills of laughter
bubbled over her lips.
In her joy at finding him again, she forgot hunger, fear, and weariness.
And in her excitement and exhilaration she rapidly poured out all that
had happened to her since that night, nearly two weeks ago, when he and
Carmontelle had so ably prevented her abduction by Remond.
He listened in deepest interest; and if Mme. Lorraine could have seen
the joy that sparkled in his expressive eyes, she would have felt like
plunging a dagger into the white breast of the girl who had brought
that joy there by her return, as it were, from the dead.
He laughed with her at the idea of Mme. Lorraine having fooled herself
so cleverly in imagining Little Nobody a ghost.
"But you must not call me Little Nobody any longer. I am Marie now,"
she said, brightly.
"It is a sweet, pretty name," he replied; "but I wish I had been
permitted to choose your name. It should have been something
else--something unique, like yourself."
She did not know what the word unique meant. She looked at him
curiously.
"What would you have called me?" she queried.
"Perhaps I will tell you some day," he replied, with an odd little
sigh; and then he changed the subject by telling her how glad he was
that she had been saved from death, and how thankful that she had come
to save him from the tortures of death by starvation.
The dark eyes sparkled with eager joy.
"Ah, how pleasant it is to have a friend!" she said, naïvely. "First
you saved me, now I am going to save you. I heard everything she said
to you. Oh, how cruel and wicked she is! And it must be dreadful,"
shuddering, "to starve! I can fancy some of its horrors, for, do you
know, Monsieur Van Zandt, I am very hungry now? I have had no supper
nor breakfast."
"Poor child!" he exclaimed, and glanced at a covered waiter on a stand
that contained the remains of his late breakfast. He drew off the
dainty napkin, and she saw delicate rolls, broiled chicken, cold ham,
preserves, fresh strawberries, chocolate and coffee, the whole flanked
by a bottle of sherry.
"I had no appetite for my breakfast, and Mima did not come back to
remove the tray," he said. "Dare I offer you the remains of the repast?
The chocolate is cold, but I drank none of it; I preferred coffee.
Likewise, the broiled chicken is untouched--in fact, I eat nothing but
a roll."
"You shall see that I will do more justice to the fare than that," she
laughed; and sitting down by the tray, she made a substantial meal,
after which she declared herself much strengthened.
It was very pleasant to have this bright, hopeful young creature
with him, in lieu of the loneliness and the cruel fate to which Mme.
Lorraine had doomed him. He listened with interest to her pretty plans
for his release. She told him how, in her drugged sleep, she had beheld
him in this very room, attended by the big, ugly, but skillful Mima.
"Heaven must have sent you that vision," he said, with fervent
gratitude. "Oh, how glad I am that I shall go free again into the
world! I have sweet, young sisters little older than you, my child, who
would grieve for me were I to die like this. Are you sure, quite sure,
that you possess the secret of the opening of the hidden door?"
Marie started.
"It must be the same as that of the outside--must it not, monsieur?"
she queried, with a confident air.
"I am not sure, but I hope it is," he replied, with a sudden dawning
anxiety.
"I will go and see at once," she exclaimed, starting toward the door.
"No, no," he said, and held her back.
"But why?" she asked, turning on him her pretty, puzzled face.
With a smile, he answered:
"Do you not see that it would not be safe to venture to open the door
while our enemies remain in the house? We must wait patiently here
until night--until they are gone away. Then we shall be able to effect
our escape unmolested."
He spoke more cheerfully than he felt. A strange dread was upon him.
What if they should not be able to open the door at the head of the
cellar stair-way?
What if he were indeed hopelessly immured within this prison, the life
of the girl forfeited to the bravery and daring that had led her to
seek and save him?
"Oh, I could bear it like a man, alone, but for her to perish under the
slow agony of starvation--Heaven forbid it!" he groaned, but breathed
not a word of his fears to the girl who was full of hope and eager
expectancy, looking eagerly forward to the hour of their release.
In spite of his anxiety, he spent a not unpleasant day in the society
of Marie. She was so lovely and so unique, in her total ignorance
of the world, that she had a subtle charm for the man inured to the
conventionalities of society. Then, too, she was constantly exciting
his wonder by the general correctness of her language, although he
knew that she was totally uneducated. But he easily accounted for this
by recalling the fact that she had been brought up in constant contact
with Mme. Lorraine and her visitors, and so unconsciously acquired the
habit of correct speaking.
"What a contrast she is to that wicked woman!" he thought, looking
admiringly at the eager, earnest, mobile face, so innocently frank, all
the feelings of her pure soul mirrored in her limpid eyes. Recalling
madame's story that the girl was low-born, he frowned, and said angrily
to himself:
"I do not believe it. She has nothing low about her. There is some
mystery about her origin, and Madame Lorraine does not choose to reveal
it, that is all."
Certainly, no girl born with the blood of a hundred earls in her veins
could have had better instincts or more innate refinement than this
Little Nobody. She was innocently frank, but she was also charmingly
shy and modest. She was child and woman exquisitely blended:
"Standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood flee."
Although she had been overjoyed at finding the reported dead man alive,
she had been very undemonstrative in her joy. She had not offered him a
single caress, such as one so young might have done; she had not even
seated herself near him. She contented herself with looking at him
across the breadth of the room, not as one afraid, but with a perfectly
natural reserve, and she preserved this frank, unembarrassed demeanor
throughout the whole day, which did not seem long to either, although
dinner and supper were among the things that were not. Neither one
remembered it, neither one was conscious of any sensation of hunger.
"But how are we to know when night comes? It is always night down
here," he said.
"It was about midday when I followed Madame Lorraine down here. Have
you a watch?" she asked.
"Yes; and I have never permitted it to run down since I came here. It
is now twenty minutes to four o'clock," he said.
"Then it is now afternoon. By and by, when the watch tells us it is
nightfall, I will creep up the steps and listen for sounds in the hall.
When I hear them go away, it will be the signal for us to open the
secret door and escape," she said.
At eight o'clock, with her ear pressed against the secret paneled door,
she heard mistress and maid going through the hall to the front door.
It opened and shut. Marie heard distinctly the loud click of the key
in the lock outside. They had gone, leaving their victim to perish, as
they thought, by the slow pangs of starvation.
Van Zandt was close by her side; she turned to him eagerly.
"I have been feeling the door in the dark for a knob like that on the
outside, but I can not find it," she said. "The surface seems perfectly
smooth, not carved as on the outside. Will you bring the lamp,
monsieur, and let us search for it?"
With a sinking heart, he obeyed her request, detaching the
swinging-lamp from its bronze frame and taking it up the dark stair-way
in his hand. Even then, in his eager anxiety, his artistic eye took
note of the gleam of the light on the girl's picturesque masses of
red-gold hair, as it waved in silken luxuriance over her shoulders.