Volume Ii Part 3 (2/2)
No help was to be expected from him, or, indeed, from any one. She had boldly defied the abbe. Would she be given strength to fight? Alas, alas! Did she not know too well that she was not made for fighting?
Where, then, to look for a.s.sistance? Rising, she slowly paced the room, and thought Heaven was cruel. Why not have let her die? Sure 'tis a venial sin to put off what one cannot bear? We can feel for ourselves with the instinct with which we are endowed, that the burthen is too great. Heaven is busy with other things--too indifferent to know or care what we poor pigmies feel. She paused in her walk before a mirror and shook her head at the pale and drawn reflexion. ”Oh! fatal gift of beauty,” she murmured, ”which men pretend to wors.h.i.+p, swearing that 'tis a glimpse of paradise. It is a devil's gift; for its province is to stir the foulest lees of the base human soul and set them festering.”
What was she to do--what to expect? Perhaps he had already invented and set going some new plan to torture her. Would she have done better, being but a helpless, tempest-tossed sport of destiny, to have surrendered, pleading her weakness and his strength? Had he not touched on the cherubs, she might have given way for very weariness; but they, as she had declared, were her buckler. They wist not of her, nor cared, being transferred to other hands, and yet they stood 'twixt her and the precipice. Then she fell a thinking of Victor and pretty Camille. When they grew up they would seek their mother. Would they not? If not, why live? Better--better far--to die. Yes: Heaven had been cruel--very, very cruel!
Suspecting nothing of the abbe's move, Mademoiselle Brunelle resolved on that very self-same morning to operate on her own account. She made her way boldly to the boudoir, and without knocking, entered.
Gabrielle started, and dried her eyes. The woman dared to invade her sanctuary. For what purpose? In her highly-strung condition of despairing nervousness, it seemed to Gabrielle that the governess looked as wicked and as menacing as the abbe.
In truth there was a sour curl about her lips that was not becoming.
The marquise, as white as a sheet, in tears? Crying her eyes out in solitude--the whining idiot! That so weak and contemptible an obstacle should be allowed to stand between herself and her ambition was preposterous. Well, the victim should be given the wrench which should impel her to retire from the scene.
”I want to talk to you about affairs,” Aglae began. ”Since you do not ask me to sit, I will choose a chair myself.”
So saying, she subsided into the most inviting fauteuil and a.s.sumed a pose of studied insolence.
”I congratulate madame on her humility,” observed the governess, in her rolling ba.s.s, with a condescending headshake. ”The Christian virtues are rare, alas, just now in persons of your birth and breeding.”
”To what do I owe this visit?” demanded the marquise, stretching her hand towards the bell-rope.
”Do not ring; you will regret it,” returned the other. ”For all our sakes, I would not have you despised by the domestics, if I can help it. You are so apathetic to the stirring history which is being made under your very nose that I am compelled to enlighten your lamentably darkened mind. It is quite on the cards that we may find it convenient to leave Lorge until the storm that threatens is past. By the dear marquis's wish I and the sweet children will accompany him into temporary banishment, and it becomes necessary to know what madame will do in that contingency. Of course she is a free agent to go where she pleases, and the marquis is too good and generous not to see that she is well provided for. It is best for madame to know that her presence with us would, for various reasons, be inconvenient--calculated, indeed, to produce scandal, which, for the sake of monsieur and the little ones, madame will desire to avoid.”
What snake was there rustling beneath the leaves?
”Is this an amba.s.sage from the Marquis de Gange?” enquired Gabrielle.
”His interests and mine have become identical,” drawled mademoiselle, ”as madame is no doubt aware, and when I speak it is for both.”
”I will go to him myself!” exclaimed the outraged marquise with trembling lips, ”He should know that betwixt himself and his wife no amba.s.sador is needed.”
Aglae raised her bushy brows and critically contemplating the aspen figure before her, laughed.
”How lamentable that madame should take no interest in what is pa.s.sing,” she exclaimed. ”She knows so little of her husband as to be unaware that he has gone to Blois on business and will not return until to-morrow.”
Could Clovis really have been base enough to confide such a mission as this to the governess, running off meanwhile himself like a coward?
Was he bent on withering every leaf of her true love that still struggled for existence? She could scarce believe it even now.
”Madame had better listen and be calm,” suggested Aglae. ”It is always better to be calm.”
”Wherever they may go, my place is with my husband and my children,”
the marquise replied with dignity.
”Cannot madame perceive a troublesome _nuance_, which, in another place, might make her position uncomfortable?”
”Enough of this impertinence,” returned the other, sternly. ”You forget that you are my servant, to be dismissed at pleasure. Speak plainly and briefly, or I will have you ejected by the valets.”
”Impertinent, am I?” cried mademoiselle, losing her temper. ”Since you wish it, I will speak plainly. Here, within these gaunt grey walls, what pa.s.ses within concerns n.o.body without; but if we should have to fly--which may or may not prove expedient--we shall be dwelling in a public place, where others will criticise our acts. It will be said that the Marquise de Gange is a mean-spirited creature to eat her bread on sufferance at the table of a man who hates her, and of his mistress who treats her with contumely. That is what will be said of the pretty, empty-headed doll who was too stupid to hold her place as the reigning belle of Paris. They will also say that she is bad, as well as mean, to have abandoned her own offspring to the mistress to mould according to her fancy. Madame will probably now perceive that her presence with us anywhere except in the privacy of Lorge, will be an abiding source of scandal.”
His mistress! The brazen wretch!--confessed--nay, gloried--in her shame; and the unhappy wife had striven so hard to believe that there was nothing but _camaraderie_ between them.
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