THE CHAPEL BY THE FORD.
It was after midnight, and the young moon had set when they came, a
long procession of riders, to the ford in which des Ageaux had laved
his horse's legs on the evening of his arrival. But the night was
starlight, and behind them the bonfire, which the men had rekindled
that its blaze might aid their preparations, was reflected in a faint
glow above the trees. As they splashed through the shallows the frogs
fell silent, scared by the invasion, but an owl that was mousing on
the slope of the downs between them and the dim lifted horizon
continued its melancholy hooting. The women shivered as the cool air
embraced them, and one here and there, as her horse, deceived by the
waving weeds, set a foot wrong, shrieked low.
But no one hesitated, for the Bat had put fear into them.
He had told them in the fewest possible words that in ninety minutes
M. de Vlaye would be knocking at the gate they left! And how long the
pursuit would tarry after that he left to their imaginations. The
result justified his course; the ford, that in daylight was a terror
to the timid, was passed without demur. One by one their horses
stepped from its dark smooth-sliding water, turned right-handed, and
falling into line set their heads up-stream towards the broken hills
and obscure winding valleys whence the river flowed.
Hampered by the wounded man's litter and the night, they could not
hope to make more than a league in the hour, and with the first
morning light might expect to be overtaken. But des Ageaux considered
that the Captain of Vlaye, ignorant of his force, would not dare to
follow at speed. And in the beginning all went well.
Over smooth turf, they made for half a league good progress, the long
bulk of the chalk hill accompanying them on the left, while on the
right the vague gloom of the wooded valley, teeming with mysterious
rustlings and shrill night cries, drew many a woman's eyes over her
shoulder. But, as the bearers of the litter could only proceed at a
walking pace, the long line of shadowy riders had not progressed far
before a gap appeared in its ranks and insensibly grew wider.
Presently the two bodies were moving a hundred yards apart, and
henceforward the rugged surface of the road, which was such as to
hamper the litter without delaying the riders, quickly augmented the
interval.
The Vicomte was mounted on his own grizzled pony, and with his two
daughters and Roger rode at the head of the first party. They had not
proceeded far before Bonne remarked that her sister was missing. She
was sure that the Abbess had been at her side when she crossed the
ford, and for a short time afterwards. Why had she left them? And
where was she?
Not in front, for only the Bat and Charles, who had attached himself
to the veteran, and was drinking in gruff tales of leaguer at his
lips, were in front. Behind, then?
Bonne turned her head and strove to learn. But the light of the stars
and the night--June nights are at no hour quite dark--allowed her to
see only the persons who rode immediately behind her. They were Roger
and the Countess. On their heels came two more--men for certain. The
rest were shadows, bobbing vaguely along, dim one moment, lost the
next.
Presently Charles, also, missed the Abbess, and asked where she was.
Roger could only answer: "To the rear somewhere."
"Learn where she is," Charles returned. "Pass the word back, lad. Ask
who is with her."
Presently, "She is not with us," Roger passed back word. "She is with
the litter, they say. And it has fallen behind. But the Lieutenant is
with it, so that she is safe there."
"She were better here," Charles answered shortly. "She is not wanted
there, I'll be sworn!"
Wanted or not, the Abbess had not put herself where she was without
design. Her passage of arms with des Ageaux had not tended to soften
her feelings. She was now bent on his punishment. The end she knew;
the means were to seek. But with the confidence of a woman who knew
herself beautiful, she doubted not that she would find or create them.
Bitterly, bitterly should he rue the day when he had forced her to
take part against the man she loved. And if she could involve in his
fall this child, this puling girl on whom the Captain of Vlaye had
stooped an eye, not in love or adoration, but solely to escape the
toils in which they were seeking to destroy him--so much the better!
The two were linked inseparably in her mind. The guilt was theirs, the
cunning was theirs, the bait was theirs; and M. de Vlaye's the
misfortune only. So women reason when they love.
If she could effect the ruin of these two, and at the same time save
the man she adored, her triumph would be complete. If--but, alas, in
that word lay the difficulty; nor as she rode with a dark face of
offence had she a notion how to set about her task. But women's wits
are better than their logic. Men spoke in her hearing of the litter
and of the delay it caused, and in a flash the Abbess saw the means
she lacked, and the man she must win. In the litter lay the one and
the other.
For the motives that led des Ageaux to bear it with him at the cost of
trouble, of delay, of danger, were no secret to a quick mind. The man
who lay in it was the key to the situation. She came near to divining
the very phrase--a master-card--which des Ageaux had used to the Bat
in the security of the locked room. A master-card he was; a card that
at all costs must be kept in the Lieutenant's hands, and out of
Vlaye's power.
Therefore, even in this midnight flight they must burden themselves
with his litter. A Duke, a Marshal of France, in favour at Court, and
lord of a fourth of Languedoc, he had but to say the word, and Vlaye
was saved--for this time at any rate. The Duke need but give some
orders, speak to some in power, call on some of those to whom his will
was law, and his _protege_ would not fall for lack of means. Up to
this point indeed, after a fashion which the Abbess did not
understand--for the man had fallen from the clouds--he was ranged
against her friend. But if he could be put into Vlaye's hands, or
fairly or foully led to take Vlaye's side, then the Captain of Vlaye
would be saved. And if she could effect this, would be saved by her.
By her!
The sweetness of such a revenge only a woman can understand. Her lover
had fancied the Rochechouart's influence necessary to his safety,
and to gain that influence he had been ready to repudiate his love.
What a sweet savour of triumph if she--she whom he was ready to
abandon--could save him by this greater influence, and in the act show
him that a mightier than he was at her feet!
She had heard stories of the Duke's character, which promised well for
her schemes. At the time of her short sojourn at Court, he had but
lately left his cloister, drawn forth by the tragical death of his
brother. He was then entering upon that career of extravagance,
eccentricity, and vice which, along with his reputation for eloquence
and for strange fits of repentance, astonished even the dissolute
circles of the Court. His name and his fame were in all mouths; a man
quick to love, quick to hate, report had it; a man in whom remorse
followed sharp on sin, and sin on remorse. A man easy to win, she
supposed, if a woman were beautiful and knew how to go about it.
Ay, if she knew; but there was the difficulty. For he was no common
man, no man of narrow experience, and the ordinary bait of beauty
might not by itself avail. The Abbess, high as her opinion of her
charm stood, perceived this. She recognised that in the circle; in
which he had moved of late beauty was plentiful, and she bent her wits
to the point. After that she might have been riding in daylight, for
all she saw of her surroundings. She passed through the ford and in
her deep thinking saw it not. The long, dark hill on her left, and the
low woods on her right with their strange night noises, and their
teeming evidences of that tragedy of death which fills the world, did
not exist for her. The gleam of the star-lit river caught her eye, but
failed to reach her brain. And if she fell back slowly and gradually
until she found herself but a few paces before the litter and its
convoy, it was not by design only, but in obedience to a subtle
attraction at work within her.
When her women presently roused her by their complaints that she was
being left behind with the litter, she took it for an omen, and smiled
in the darkness. They, on the contrary, were frightened, nor without
reason. The road they pursued followed the bank of the river; but the
wide vale had been left behind. They had passed into a valley more
strait and gloomy; a winding trough, close pressed by long, hog-shaped
hills, between which the travellers became every moment more deeply
engaged. The stars were fading from the sky, the darkness which comes
before the dawn was on them, and with the darkness a chill.
This change alarmed the women. But it did not terrify them one half as
much as the marked anxiety of the litter-party. More than once des
Ageaux' voice could be heard adjuring the bearers to move faster. More
than once a rider passed between them and the main body, and on each
of these occasions men fell back and took the places of the old
carriers. But still the cry was "Faster! Faster!"
In truth the day was on the point of breaking, and the fugitives were
still little more than two leagues from Villeneuve. At any moment they
might be overtaken, when the danger of an attack would be great, since
the light must reveal the paucity of their numbers. In this pinch even
the Lieutenant's stoicism failed him, and moment by moment he trembled
lest the sound of galloping horses reach his ear. Less than an hour's
riding at speed would place his charges in safety; yet for the sake of
a wounded man he must risk all. No wonder that he cried again,
"Faster, men, faster!" and pressed the porters to their utmost speed.
Soon out of the darkness ahead loomed the Bat. "This will never do, my
lord," he said, reining in his horse beside his leader. He spoke in a
low voice, but the Abbess, a dozen paces ahead, could hear his words,
and even the heavy breathing of the carriers. "To go on at this pace
is to hazard all."
"You must go forward with the main body!" des Ageaux replied shortly.
"Let the women who are with us ride on and join the others, and do
you--but, no, that will not do."
"For certain it will not do!" the Bat answered. "It is I must stay,
for the fault is mine. But for me you would have left him, my lord."
"Do you think we could support him on a horse?"
"It would kill him!" the Bat rejoined. "But it is not two hundred
paces to the chapel by the ford that you remarked this morning. If we
leave him there, and M. de Vlaye finds him, he will be as anxious to
keep life in him as we are. If, on the other hand, M. de Vlaye
overlooks him, we can bring him in to-morrow."
"If it must be," des Ageaux answered reluctantly, "we must leave him.
But we cannot leave him without some assistance. Who will stay with
him?"
"_Diable!_" the Bat muttered.
"I will not leave him without some one," des Ageaux repeated firmly.
"Some one must stay."
Out of the darkness came the answer. "I," the Abbess said, "will stay
with him!"
"You, mademoiselle?" in a tone of astonishment.
"I," she repeated, "and my women. I," she continued haughtily, "have
nothing to fear from the Captain of Vlaye or his men."
"And mademoiselle's robe," the Bat muttered with the faintest
suspicion of irony in his tone, "protects her."
Charles, who had joined them with the Bat, thoughtlessly assented. "To
be sure!" he cried. "Let my sister stay! She can stay without danger."
Alone of the three des Ageaux remained silent--pondering. He had seen
enough of the Abbess to suspect that it was not humanity alone which
dictated her offer. Probably she desired to rejoin her admirer. In
that case, did she know enough of the fugitives' plans and strength to
render her defection formidable?
He thought not. At any rate it seemed well to take the chance. He was
taking, he was beginning to see that he was taking a good many
chances. "It seems a good plan, if mademoiselle be indeed willing," he
said. He wished that he could see her face.
"I have said," she replied coldly, "that I am willing."
But her women showed forthwith that they were not. What? Remain in
this wilderness in the dark with a dying man? They would be eaten by
wolves, they would be strangled by witches, they would be ravished by
thieves! Never! And in a trice one was in hysterics, deaf to her
mistress's threats and to the Bat's grim hints. The other, after a
conflict, allowed herself to be browbeaten, and sullenly, and with
tears, yielded. But not until the water of the ford rippled about
their horses' hoofs, and the tiny spark of light that through the open
door beaconed the shallows shone in their eyes.
Had it been day they would have had before them a scene at once wild
and peaceful. On their right, below the ford--which was formed by
the passage of the stream from one side of the narrow valley to the
other--a lofty bluff overhung a black pool. Above the ford, on the
level meadow, and a stone's-throw from the track--if track that could
be called which was not used by a hundred persons in a year--stood a
tiny chapel and cell, which some hermit in past ages had built with
his own hands. The approach of the Crocans had driven his latest
successor from his post; but des Ageaux, passing that way in the day,
had noted the chapel, and with the forethought of the soldier who
expected to return in the dark he had seen the earthen lamp relit. Its
light, he knew, would, in case of need, direct him to the ford.
At present that lamp, a tiny spark in the blackness, was all they saw.
They made for it through the shallows and over a bed of shingle across
which the horses clattered noisily. In haste they reached the door of
the chapel, and there in a trice--for if the thing was to be done it
must be done quickly--they aided the Abbess and the lay sister to
alight, bore in the litter with the wounded man, and closed the door
on all; this last, that the light might no longer be visible from the
ford. Then they, the men, got themselves to horse again, and away at a
round trot.
Not without repugnance on the part of several; not without regret and
misgiving. Des Ageaux's heart smote him as his horse's feet carried
him farther and farther away; it seemed so cowardly a thing to leave
women to bear in that wild and lonely place the brunt of whatever
might befall. And Charles, ready as he had been to acclaim the notion,
wondered if he had erred in leaving his sister thus lightly. But in
truth they were embarked in an enterprise whose full perils it lay
with time to disclose. And other and more pressing anxieties soon had
possession of their minds.
They had been less troubled had they been able to witness the Abbess's
demeanour in her solitude. While her companion, overcome by her fears,
sank down in a fit of hysterical weeping, Odette de Villeneuve
remained standing within the low doorway, and with head erect listened
frowning until the last sound of the horses' hoofs died to the ear.
Then she drew a deep breath, and, turning slowly, she allowed her eyes
to take stock of the place in which she so strangely found herself.
It was a tiny building of rough-hewn stones, with an altar and
crucifix, also of stone, erected at the end remote from the door.
Along either wall ran a stone bench, on one or other of which the good
fathers must have spent many a summer day watching the ford; for at a
certain point the stone was polished and worn by friction. The litter
and the wounded man filled half the open space, leaving visible only a
floor of trodden earth foul with the droppings of birds and sheep, and
betraying in other respects the results of neglect. Here and there on
some stone larger than its fellows, and particularly on the lintel, a
prentice hand had carved symbols; but, this notwithstanding, the whole
wore by the light of the smoky lamp an aspect far from sacred.
Yet the prospect of spending several hours in so poor a place did not
appear to depress the Abbess. Her inspection finished, she nodded an
answer to her thoughts, and sitting down on the bench beside the
litter, rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, and
fixing her large dark eyes on the wounded man, gave herself up, as
completely as if she had been in her own chamber, to her thoughts.
Her woman, whose complaining, half fractious, half fearful, had sunk
to an occasional sob, presently looked at her, and fascinated by that
gloomy absorption--which might have dealt with the mysteries of the
faith, but turned in fact on the faithlessness of man--she could not
look away. And moments passed; the first pale glimmer of dawn
appeared, and still the two women faced one another across the
insensible man whose heavy breathing, broken from time to time by some
obstruction, was the one sound that vied with the low murmur of the
stream.
Suddenly the Abbess lifted her head. Mingled with the water's chatter
was a harsher sound--a sound of rattling stones, of jingling steel
and, a second later, of men's voices. She rose slowly to her feet, and
as the other woman, alarmed by the expression of her features, would
have screamed, she silenced her by a fierce gesture. Then she stood,
her hand resting against the wall beside her, and listened.
She had no doubt that it was he. Her parted lips her eyes, half
fierce, half tender, told as much. It was he, and she had but to open
the door, she had but to show herself in the lighted doorway, and he
would come to her! As the voices of the riders grew, and the rattle of
hoofs among the pebbles ceased, she pictured him abreast of the
hermitage; she fancied, but it must have been fancy, that she could
distinguish his voice. Or no, he would not be speaking. He would be
riding, silent, alone, his hand on his hip, the grey light of morning
falling on his stern face. And at that, at that picture of him, his
deeds and his career, his greatness who had made himself, his firmness
whom no obstacle stayed, rose before her embodied in the solitary
figure riding foremost through the dawn. Her breast rose and fell
tumultuously. The hand that rested on the wall shook. She had only to
open the door, she had only to cry his name aloud, only to show
herself, and he would be at her side! And she would be no longer
against him but with him, no longer would be ranked with his foes--who
were so many--but for him against the world!
The temptation was so strong that her form seemed to droop and sway as
if a physical charm drew her in the direction of the man she loved,
the man to whom, in spite of his faults, or by reason of them, she
clung in the face of defection. But powerful as was the spell laid
upon her, pride--pride and her will proved stronger. She stiffened
herself; for an instant she did not seem to breathe. Nor was it until
the last faint clink of iron died away that she turned feverish eyes
in search of some crevice, some loophole, some fissure, through which
she might yet see him; yet see, if it were but the waving of his
plume.
She found none. The only windows, two tiny arrow-slits that had never
known glass, were in the wall remote from the track. On that she set
her teeth to control the moan of disappointment that rose from her
heart; and slowly she sank into her old seat.
But not into her old reverie. The eyes which she bent on the sick man
were no longer dreamy. On the contrary, they were fixed in a gaze of
eager scrutiny that sought to drag from the Duke's pallid features the
secret of his weakness and waywardness, of his strange nature and
bizarre fame. And unconsciously as she gazed, she bent nearer and
nearer to him; her look grew sharper and more imperious. All hung on
him now--all! Her mind was made up. Fortune had not cast him so timely
in her path, fate had not afforded her the opportunity of which she
had dreamed, without intending her to profit by it, without proposing
to crown the scheme with success. The spell of her lover's presence,
the spell that had obsessed her so short a time before that the
interval could be reckoned by seconds, was broken! Never should it be
hers to play that creeping part, to regain him that way, to return to
him tamely, empty-handed, a suppliant for his love! No, not while it
might be hers to return a conqueror, an equal, with a greater than the
Captain of Vlaye in her toils!
She rose to her feet, and tasting triumph in advance, she smiled. With
a firm hand, disregarding her woman's remonstrance, she extinguished
the lamp. The pale light of early morning stole in through the narrow
slits, and then for a brief instant the Abbess held her breath; for
the light falling on the Duke's face so sharpened his thin temples and
nervous features, showed him so livid and wan and death-like, that she
thought him gone. He was not gone, but she acted upon the hint. If he
died, where were her schemes and the clever combinations she had been
forming? Quickly she drew from the litter a flagon of broth that had
been mixed with a cunning cordial; and first moistening his lips with
the liquor, by-and-by she contrived to make him swallow some. In the
act he opened his eyes, and they were clear and sensible; but it was
only to close them again with a sigh, half of satisfaction, half of
weakness. Nevertheless, from this time his state was rather one of
sleep, the sleep craved by exhausted nature, than of insensibility or
fever, and with every hour the forces of his youth and constitution
wrought at the task of restoration.
Odette, brooding over him, watched with satisfaction the return of a
more healthy colour to his cheeks. Time passed, and presently, while
the light was still cold and young, there came an interruption. A
murmur of voices, and the jingle of spur and bit, warned her that M.
de Vlaye, baffled in his attempt to cut off the fugitives before they
found refuge, was returning through the valley. This time, how
different were her sensations. She started to her feet and listened,
and her face grew hard, but under pressure of suspense, not of desire.
Suspense--for if they turned aside, if they entered the deserted
chapel and discovered her, her plan--and her very soul was now set on
its success--perished still-born.
It was a trying moment, but it passed. Probably Vlaye knew the chapel
of old, and knew that the good father had fled from it. At any rate he
passed by it, and rode on his way. She heard the trampling of the
horses break the singing of the ford; and then she heard only the
murmur of the water and the morning hymn of a lark that, startled by
the passage of the riders, soared above the glen, and with the
sunshine on its throbbing breast, hailed the warm rising of another
day.
Whether the lark's song appealed to the softer strain in her, or
she began to hate the sordid interior with its grey half-light, the
moment she was sure that the riders had gone on their way she opened
the door and went out. The sun was peeping into the valley and all
nature was astir. The laughing waters of the ford, the steep bluff,
darksome by night, now clad in waving tree-tops, the floor of meadow
emerald-green, all reflected the brightness of a sky in which not one
but half a dozen songsters trilled forth the joy of life. After the
gloom, the vigil, the danger of the night, the scene appealed to her
strongly; and for a brief time, while she stood gazing on the vale
unmarred by human works or human presence, she felt a compunction;
such a feeling as in a similar scene invades the breast of the veteran
hunter, and whispers to him that to carry death into the haunts of
nature is but a sorry task.
A feeling as quickly suppressed in the one case as in the other. A few
minutes later the Abbess appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to the
woman to join her outside.
"Give me your hood and veil," she said in a tone that forestalled
demur. "And I need your outer robe! Don't stare, woman!" she continued
fiercely. "Is there any one to see you? Can the hills hurt you? Obey.
It is my pleasure to wear the dress of the order, and I have it not
with me!"
"But, madam----"
"Obey, woman, and take my cloak!" the Abbess retorted. "Wrap yourself
in that!" And when the change was made, and she had assumed over her
dress the loose black and white robe of the order, "Now wait for me
here," she said. "And if he call, as is possible, do not go to him,
but fetch me!"
She departed towards the pool below the ford, and, disappearing behind
a clump of low willows, made, using the still water for a mirror, some
further changes in her toilet.
Not fruitlessly, for when she returned to the door of the chapel, the
woman who awaited her stared, thinking that she had never seen her
mistress show fairer in her silks than in this black and white, which
she so seldom favoured. And soon there was another who thought--if not
that thought, a similar one. The Duke, opening on the glory of
sunshine and summer warmth, the eyes that had so nearly closed for
good, saw at the foot of his litter a wondrous figure kneeling before
the altar.
The face of the figure was turned from him, and for a time, between
sleeping and waking, he considered her idly, supposing her now an
angel interceding for him in the other life on which he had entered,
now a nun praying beside his bier; for he took it for certain he was
dead. By-and-by he passed over to the theory of the angel, for the
figure moved, and the sunlight passing in through a tiny window-slit
formed a nimbus about her head. And then again, moving afresh, as in
an ecstacy of devotion, she lifted her eyes to the crucifix, and the
hood falling back with the movement revealed a profile of a beauty and
purity almost unearthly.
The Duke sighed. He had sighed before, but apparently, for the sigh
had not changed her rapt expression, she had not heard. Now she did
hear. She rose, and with a deep genuflection turned from the altar,
and glided with downcast eyes to his side. Eyes softened to the
meekness of a dove's looked into his, and found that he was awake.
Then, angel or saint, or whatever she was, she made a sign to him not
to speak; and producing, by magic as it seemed, ambrosial food, she
fed him, and with a finger on his lip bade him in gentle accents,
"Sleep!"
Sleep? To think he could sleep when an angel--and while he laughed in
ridicule of the notion he slept, that heavenly face framed in its
nun's hood, that drooping form with the hands crossed upon the breast
moving before him into the land of visions. He was back again in those
earliest days of his cloistered existence, when to live in an
atmosphere, pure and apart, innocent of the passions and desires of
the world, had been his dream. He had learned--only too soon--that
that atmosphere and that innocence were not to be maintained, though
the walls of a monastery be ten feet through. For the nature which the
thought of such a life had charmed was of all natures the one most
open to worldly fascinations. He had fallen; and he had presently
replaced the vision of being good by the enthusiasm of doing good. He
had lifted his voice, and the preaching of Pere Ange had moved half
Paris to a twenty-four hours' repentance. His own had lasted a little
longer.
Now, weak and unnerved, he reverted at sight of this beautiful nun's
face to his old visions of a saintly life; and in innocent adoration
he dreamt of naught but her countenance. When he awoke again and found
her still at her devotions, though the sun was high, still at his
service when she found him waking, still moving dovelike and silent
about her ministrations--he watched her everywhere. Several times he
wished to speak, but she laid a finger on her lips, and covering her
hands with her sleeves, sat on the bench beside him, reading her book
of hours. And so during the hazy period of his return to consciousness
he saw her. Awake or drowsing, stung to life by the smart of his hurt
or lulled to sleep by the music of the stream, he had her face always
before him.
At length there came a time, a little before high noon, when he awoke
with a clearer eye and a mind capable of feeling surprise at his
position. He saw her sitting beside him, but he saw also the rough
grey walls, the altar, the crucifix; and to wonder succeeded
curiosity. What had happened, and how came he there? His eyes sought
her face and remained riveted to it.
"Where am I?" he whispered.
She marked that his eyes were clear and his strength greater, and,
"You are in the chapel in the upper valley of the Dronne," she
answered.
"But I----" He stopped and closed his eyes, brought up by some
confusion in his thoughts. At last, "I fancied I fought with some
one," he whispered. "It was in a courtyard--at night? And there were
lights? It was one of Vlaye's men, and the place was----" He broke off
in the painful effort to remember. His lips moved without sound.
"Villeneuve," she said.
"Villeneuve," he whispered gratefully. "But this is not Villeneuve?"
"We are two leagues from Villeneuve."
"How come I here?"
She told him, preserving the gentle placidity which, not without
thought, she had adopted for her _role_. The repulse of Vlaye's men
and the Lieutenant's decision to quit the chateau, that and the night
retreat up to the arrival of the party at the ford--all were told.
Then she broke off.
"But des Ageaux?" he murmured. "Where is he?" And again, that he might
look round him, he tried to rise. "Where are they all?" he continued
in wonder. "They have not left me?" with a querulous note in his
voice.
"They are not here," she answered. And gently she induced him to lie
back again. "Be still, I pray," she said. "Be still. You do yourself
no good by moving."
He sighed. "Where are they?" he persisted.
"We were hard pressed at the ford," she answered with feigned
reluctance. "And your litter delayed them. It was necessary to leave
you or all had been lost."
He lay in silence awhile with closed eyes, considering what she had
told him. At last, "And you stayed?" he murmured in so low a voice
that the words were barely audible. "You stayed!"
"It was necessary," she answered.
"And you have been beside me all night?"
She bowed her head.
His eyes filled with tears, and his lips trembled, for he was very
weak. He groped for her hand, and would have carried it to his lips,
but as men kiss relics or the hands of saints--if she had not withheld
it from him. Settling the thin coverings more comfortably round him,
she gave him to drink again, softly chiding him and bidding him be
silent--be silent and sleep.
But, "You have been beside me all night!" he repeated. "All night,
alone here, and a woman! A woman!"
She did not tell him that she was not alone; that her woman was even
then sitting outside, under strict orders not to show herself. For now
she was assured that she was in the right path. She had had
opportunities of studying his countenance while he slept, and she had
traced in it those qualities of enthusiasm and weakness, of the
libertine and the ascetic, which his career so remarkably displayed.
The beauty which in ordinary circumstances his jaded eye, versed in
woman's wiles, might neglect, would appeal with irresistible force in
a garb of saintliness. Nay, more; as he recovered his strength and
returned to his common feelings, it would prove, she felt sure, more
provocative than the most worldly lures. Her resolve to carry the
matter through was now fixed and immutable: and with her eye on the
goal, she neglected no precaution that occurred to her mind.