When she was alone, when his departing footsteps had ceased to echo
along the corridor without, Mademoiselle Stephanie drew a long,
quivering breath and moved to a chair by the window. She sank into it
with the abandonment of a woman at the end of her strength, and sat
passive with closed eyes.
For three years now she had lived in this turbulent island of Maritas.
For three years she had watched discontent gradually merge into
rebellion and anarchy. And now she knew that at last the end was near.
Her stepfather, the Governor, held his post under the French Government,
but France at that time was too occupied with matters nearer home to
spare much attention for the little island in the Atlantic and its
seething unrest. De Rochefort was considered a capable man, and
certainly if treachery and cruelty could have upheld his authority he
would have maintained his ascendency without difficulty. But the
absinthe demon had gripped him with resistless strength, and all his
shrewdness had long since been drained away.
Day by day he plunged deeper into the vice that was destroying him, and
Stephanie could but stand by and watch the gradual gathering of a storm
that was bound to overwhelm them both.
There was no love between them. They were bound together by circumstance
alone. She had gone to the place to be with her dying mother, and had
remained there at that mother's request. Madame de Rochefort's belief in
her husband had never been shaken, and, dying, she had left her English
daughter in his care.
Stephanie had accepted a position that there was no one else to fill,
and then had begun the long martyrdom that, she now saw, could have only
one ending. She and the Governor were doomed. Already the great wave of
revolution towered above them. Very soon it would burst and sweep both
away into the terrible vortex of destruction.
It was only of late that she had come to realise this, and the horror of
the awakening still at times had power to appal her. For she knew she
was utterly unprotected. She had tried in vain to rouse the Governor to
see the ever-growing danger, had striven desperately to open his eyes to
the unmistakable signs of the coming change. He had laughed at her at
first, and later, when she had implored him to resign his post, he had
brutally refused.
She had never approached him again on the matter, seeing the futility of
argument; but on that selfsame day she had provided herself with a means
of escape which could not fail her when the last terrible moment
arrived. Flight she never contemplated. It would have been an utter
impossibility. She was without friends, without money. Her relations in
England were to her as beings in another sphere. She had known them in
her childhood, but they had since dropped out of her existence. The only
offer of help that had reached her was that which she had just rejected
from the man whom, of all others, she most hated and desired to avoid.
She shivered suddenly and violently as she recalled the interview. Was
it possible that she feared him as well? She had always disliked him,
conscious of something in his manner that perpetually excited her
antagonism. She had felt his lynx eyes watching her continually
throughout the bitter struggle, and she had known always that he was
watching for her downfall.
He was the richest man in the island, and as such his influence was
considerable. He had not yet made common cause with the revolutionary
party, but it was generally felt that his sympathies were on their side,
and it was in him that the majority hoped to find a leader when the time
for rebellion should be ripe. He had never committed himself to do so,
but no one on either side doubted his intentions, Mademoiselle
Stephanie, as every one called her, least of all.
She had been accustomed to meeting him fairly often, though he had never
been a very frequent guest at the palace. Perhaps he divined her
aversion, or perhaps--and this was the more likely supposition--his
hatred of the Governor debarred him from enjoying his hospitality.
He was a man of fierce independence and passionate temperament,
possessing withal a dogged tenacity that she always ascribed to the fact
that he was born of an English mother. But she had never before that day
credited him with the desire to exercise a personal influence in her
life. She had avoided him by instinct, and till that day he had always
seemed to acquiesce.
His offer of marriage had been utterly unexpected. Regarding him as she
did, it seemed to her little short of an insult. She hardly knew what
motive to ascribe to him for it; but circumstances seemed to point to
one, ambition. No doubt he thought that she might prove of use to him
when he stepped into the Governor's place.
Well, he had his answer--a very emphatic one. He could scarcely fail to
take her at her word. She smiled faintly to herself even while she
shivered, as she recalled the scarcely suppressed fury with which he had
received his dismissal. She was glad that she had managed to pierce
through that immaculate armour of self-complacence just once. She had
not been woman otherwise.