There was a hurried but intense embrace, as though their two souls sought to merge into one form, and Gaudin left the apartment in the same manner that he had entered it. The Marchioness retired from the window, pale, and tottering in her step, and had scarcely gained her seat by the fire when Gervais, her father’s attendant, entered the apartment.
‘M. d’Aubray has rung for his wine, madame,’ said the man. ‘You have the tankard in the chiffonier.’
‘I will give it to him myself, Gervais,’ replied the Marchioness, with an assumption of indifference that was almost spasmodic. ‘You can go to bed. Nothing more will be wanted.’
‘I have told Michel to watch the terrain to-night, madame,’ continued the man. ‘He noticed some one prowling round the walls just as it was getting dusk.’
‘There is no occasion for that,’ replied Marie. ‘There is nothing out of doors worth their stealing, and very little within. Good-night.’
The retainer departed; and the Marchioness took the jug which the man had brought in, and poured it into an old cup of thin silver, embossed with figures, which might have been the
Le Premier Pas
work of Benvenuto Cellini, that stood on the chiffonier. And then, with a hurried glance round the room, she broke the seals of the packet Sainte-Croix had left in her hand, and shook a few grains of its contents into the beverage. No change was visible; a few bubbles rose and broke upon the surface, but this was all.
Taking the tankard with her, she left the large room and went to her father’s chamber. M. d’Aubray had retired to rest, and it was evident that sleep had just surprised him, as the lamp was still burning at the side of his bed, and a deed was in his hand that he had been reading. The Marchioness gazed at it for a few seconds with fixed regards. The traces of the late conflict with her feelings had departed, and her face had assumed once more that terrible and unfathomable expression which has been before alluded to, although a close observer might have seen the pupils of her eyes dilated, and a strange light coruscating in them.