“How did you part?”
“Naturally enough; she attended to her duties up to nine o’clock when she arranged my things, set out my drink for the night and went away.”
“Your drink? may she not have mixed something with it?”
“No; for I remember that I felt that strange thrill as I was putting the glass to my lips.”
“What strange thrill?”
“The same I felt down at our place when that foreign lord Baron Balsamo came to our home. Something like vertigo, a dazing, a loss of all the faculties. I was at my piano when I felt all spin and swim around me. Looking before me I saw the baron reflected in a mirror. I remember no more except that I found myself waking in the same spot without ability to reckon how long I had been unconscious.”
“Is this the only time you experienced this feeling?”
“Again on the night of the accident with the fireworks. I was dragged along with the crowd when suddenly, on the point of being mangled, a cloud came over my eyes and my rigid arms were extended: through the cloud I just had time to catch a glimpse of that man. I fell off into a sleep or swoon then. You know that Baron Balsamo carried me away and brought me home.”
“Yes; and did you see him again on the night when Nicole fled?”
“No; but I felt all the symptoms which betoken his presence. I went into sleep; when I woke, I was not on the bed but on the floor, alone, cold as in death. I called for Nicole but she had disappeared.”