Milady sprang toward him. “Oh, not a word,” said she in a concentrated voice, “not a word of all that I have said to you to this man, or I am lost, and it would be you—you—”
Then as the steps drew near, she became silent for fear of being heard, applying, with a gesture of infinite terror, her beautiful hand to Felton’s mouth.
Felton gently repulsed Milady, and she sank into a chair.
Lord de Winter passed before the door without stopping, and they heard the noise of his footsteps soon die away.
Felton, as pale as death, remained some instants with his ear bent and listening; then, when the sound was quite extinct, he breathed like a man awaking from a dream, and rushed out of the apartment.
“Ah!” said Milady, listening in her turn to the noise of Felton’s steps, which withdrew in a direction opposite to those of Lord de Winter; “at length you are mine!”
Then her brow darkened. “If he tells the baron,” said she, “I am lost—for the baron, who knows very well that I shall not kill myself, will place me before him with a knife in my hand, and he will discover that all this despair is but acted.”
She placed herself before the glass, and regarded herself attentively; never had she appeared more beautiful.
“Oh, yes,” said she, smiling, “but we won’t tell him!”
In the evening Lord de Winter accompanied the supper.