"What is the matter with me?" she asked. "I am no longer myself. It is as if I were only an instrument in hands that use me as they will. Why do I go this morning to the Château de la Roche? I don't know. I don't know what I shall say to excuse myself when I am there. Yet, somehow, the words will come to me—I feel it."
For it was to the château above the Valley of the Shadow that she was going.
When she reached the gates, half-way up the slope of the wooded hill which the whole party had climbed together yesterday, suddenly the nervous exaltation that had carried her courageously so far, broke like a violin string too tightly drawn. She was horrified at her own boldness. She half turned back; then, setting her lips together, she slipped down from her saddle and opened the gate.
This morning no slim, black-clad figure moved among the wilderness of neglected flowers. Virginia tethered her mare, ascended the two or three stone steps, and struck the mailed glove of iron which formed the knocker on the oak of the door. Its echoes went reverberating through wide, empty spaces, and for some moments she stood trembling at her audacity. She said to herself that she could not knock again. If no one answered the last summons she would take it as a sign that she ought not to have come, and she would steal away. But just as the limit of time she mentally set had passed, and she was in the act of turning from the door, it opened.
The servant who had guided Virginia and her friends through the house the day before appeared, his pale, dignified old face showing such evident signs of surprise that the American girl, who had never flinched before any one or anything, stammered and blushed as she asked for Mademoiselle Dalahaide.
The old man politely ushered her in, but he was unable to hide his embarrassment. Mademoiselle should be informed at once, if she were at home, but, in fact, it was possible—— He hesitated, and Virginia saw well that he prepared a way of escape for his young mistress in case she wished to avoid the unexpected caller.
"Pray tell mademoiselle that—that——" Virginia began. She had meant to finish by saying that her business was urgent. But—supposing when she found herself face to face with the girl in black, the fugitive desires which had dragged her here refused to be clothed in coherent words?
As the servant waited respectfully for the end of the message, a door which Virginia remembered as leading into the family chapel suddenly opened. Mademoiselle Dalahaide came slowly out, her head bent, her long black dress sweeping the stone floor of the hall in sombre folds. She did not see the stranger at first; but a faint ejaculation from the lips of the old Frenchman caused the dark head to be quickly raised.
The eyes of the two girls met. Mademoiselle Dalahaide drew back a little, her tragically arresting face unlighted by a smile. She looked the question that she did not speak; but she gave the American no greeting, and there was something of displeasure or distrust in her level, searching look.
The moment which Virginia had dreaded, yet sought for, had come. All self-consciousness left her. She went to meet the other in an eager, almost childlike way.