"Recover strength, and go back to your harpsichord," said the mesmerist, enveloping her, as she rose, with a fresh supply of magnetism.
Andrea acted like the racehorse which overtaxes itself to accomplish the master's will, however unfair. She walked through the doorway, where he had opened the door, and, still asleep, descended the stairs slowly.
[CHAPTER VII.]
THE MAID AND THE MISTRESS.
Gilbert had passed this time in unspeakable anguish. Balsamo was but a man, but he was a strong one, and the youth was weak: He had attempted twenty times to mount to the assault of the guest room, but his trembling limbs gave way under him and he fell on his knees.
Then the idea struck him to get the gardener's ladder and by its means climb up outside to the
window, and listen and spy. But as he stooped to pick up this ladder, lying on the grass where he remembered, he heard a rustling noise by the house, and he turned.
He let the ladder fall, for he fancied he saw a shade flit across the doorway. His terror made him believe it, not a ghost—he was a budding philosopher who did not credit them—but Baron Taverney. His conscience whispered another name, and he looked up to the second floor. But Nicole had put out her light, and not another, or a sound came from all over the house—the guest's room excepted.
Seeing and hearing nothing, convinced that he had deluded himself, Gilbert took up the ladder and had set foot on it to climb where he placed it, when Andrea came down from Balsamo's room. With a lacerated heart, Gilbert forgot all to follow her into the parlor where again she sat at the instrument; her candle still burned beside it.
Gilbert tore his bosom with his nails to think that here he had kissed the hem of her robe with such reverence. Her condescension must spring from one of those fits of corruption recorded in the vile books which he had read—some freak of the senses.