‘Nothing, madame,’ replied her domestic, ‘but the confiture you gave me for breakfast; and that could not have hurt me.’
‘Oh no,’ answered Marie, as if she thought the subject too insignificant for further notice. But, after a moment or two, she added, ‘Besides, I partook of that myself, you know.’
As she spoke, she turned a gaze of the most intense scrutiny upon Françoise’s face; but no trace of any emotion would have been visible upon her own features had she been unmasked. Then bidding Louise, who was reassured by the apparent respectability of the house, to follow her, they went upstairs, preceded by the panting girl, who could scarcely hold the light lamp she carried before them.
As she reached her chamber—the one in which her interview with Sainte-Croix took place, after the scene at Theria’s apartments, that in its sequel led to so much of crime and misery—she took a small cabinet down from the top of a bureau, and opening it, discovered a row of little bottles. From one of these she let fall a few drops of some colourless fluid into a glass of water, and told Françoise to drink it, when she would, without doubt, experience immediate relief. The girl took the draught and swallowed it—in the course of a minute or two declaring herself to be comparatively free from pain, as she poured forth expressions of gratitude to her mistress for this prompt remedy. She was then told that she might retire to bed, without any fear of a recurrence of her malady; and she accordingly withdrew.
No sooner had the door closed upon her than Marie took the mask from her face, and advancing towards Louise, who was standing close to the mantelpiece, where she had kept during the short conversation between Françoise and her mistress, seized her arm, and, looking full at her, exclaimed—
‘Do you recollect me? We met before at Versailles.’
‘You are the Marchioness of Brinvilliers,’ replied the Languedocian, after a momentary start of surprise, in a tone the calmness of which astonished Marie. And she endeavoured to withdraw her arm.
‘Stop,’ replied the Marchioness; ‘we do not part yet.’ And she dragged her companion after her towards the door, turning the heavy lock and withdrawing the key. ‘There!’ she continued, ‘see how useless it is for you to attempt to leave me—how completely you are in my power. Now, listen to me, and attend as you would to the exhortations of a priest upon your dying bed.’
She threw the arm of Louise from her grasp, and regarded her for a few seconds with a look of the deadliest hate. The beauty of her features had disappeared in the contortions produced by the passions that were working within her; the terrible impassibility of her countenance gave way, and she gazed at Louise with an expression that was almost fiendish.
‘I have you, then, at last,’ she continued, in a low, deep voice, which, in spite of all her efforts, betrayed her emotion by its quivering. ‘The only amulet that could charm away Sainte-Croix’s affections is in my grasp. I can destroy it—with as little care as I would the paltry charm of a mountebank; and when it is once disposed of I can reign—alone—and queen of all his love. Do you understand me?’