The count was easily satisfied, and the remembrance of his trouble soon faded from his mind. Madeleine asked him if she should sing, and he nodded a pleased assent. She could not give voice to any but the saddest melodies, for a sorrowful presentiment that she would never sing to him again, filled her mind. She continued to charm away his cares by the witchery of her accents until Maurice returned. The result of his advocacy was quickly told. The countess was inflexible, and awaited her son.
CHAPTER XLIV.
A CHANGE.
The strongest heart will sometimes betray that it is overtaxed through the pressure of a sorrow which appears trivial contrasted with the stupendous burdens it has borne unflinchingly; the firmest spirit is sometimes crushed at last, by the weight of a moral "feather" that breaks the back of endurance. Madeleine's courage proved insufficient to encounter calmly this new trial. She could not see that poor, wretched, brain-shattered sufferer, that proud man bowed to the dust, clinging to her with such a strange, perplexed, yet steady grasp, and know that she could no longer tend, amuse, and soothe him! Her composure was forsaking her, and she could only hurriedly whisper to Maurice,—
"I will pack your father's clothes; make him comprehend that we have no alternative; reconcile him if you can. Since he must go, it had better be at once; the countess is no doubt anxiously expecting him."
She passed into the count's room, gathered together all his wearing apparel, and knelt down beside his trunk. Her heart swelled as though it would burst; she bowed her head upon the trunk she was about to open, and sobbed aloud!
Madeleine's tears were not like Bertha's,—mere summer rain which sprang to her eyes with every passing emotion, and fell in sun-broken showers that freshened and brightened her own spirit. Madeleine seldom wept, and when the tears came, they sprang up from the very depth of her true heart, in a hot, bitter current which was less like the bubbling of a fountain than the lava bursting from a volcano. It is ever thus with powerful, yet self-controlled natures, and Madeleine's equanimity in the midst of trials which would have prostrated others, was not a lack of keen, quick sensibility, but an evidence of the supremacy she had gained by discipline over her passions.
Madeleine wept and wept, forgetting the work before her, the time that was passing, the necessity for action! All the tears that she might have shed during the last few weeks, if it were her nature to weep as most women weep, now rushed forth in one passionate torrent. She did not hear a step approaching; she was hardly conscious of the encircling arm that raised her from the ground, nor was she startled by the voice that said,—
"Madeleine! my own Madeleine! Is it you sobbing thus?"