Count Tristan had caught his attendant's hand when he conceived the idea that she was to be sent away from him, and when she refused to leave him, he pressed it approvingly.
"I am mistress here!" said the countess, with something of her former grandeur of bearing. "M. Maurice de Gramont has no authority to engage or discharge domestics, or to give any orders that are not mine. I will have none of Mademoiselle de Gramont's spies placed about my person! Go and tell her so, and say that after this last outrage, I will never see her face again. Would that I might never hear her name! She has been my curse,—my misery; she shall never cross my path more!"
The count rose up as if sudden strength were miraculously infused into his limbs; he raised both his arms toward heaven, and wailed out, "O Lord God, bless her! bless her! Madeleine! Good angel! Madeleine!"
The next moment he fell forward senseless and rolled to the ground.
The countess was stupefied;—she could not speak, or stoop, or stir.
The alarmed house-keeper knelt beside him. Robert hastily set down the salver and lent his assistance. They lifted the count and laid him upon the sofa. The instant Mrs. Lawkins saw his face, and the foam issuing from his lips, she exclaimed,—
"It is another fit! It is his second stroke! Lord have mercy upon him! and upon you," she continued, turning to the countess, solemnly; "for, if he dies, so sure as there is a heaven above us, you have killed your own son!"
The countess' look of horror softened the kindly house-keeper, in spite of her just wrath, and she added, "He may recover,—he has great strength. Robert, run quickly for Dr. Bayard."
Then she unfastened the patient's cravat and dashed cold water upon his head, and chafed his hands, while his mother, slowly awakening from her state of stupefaction, drew near, and bent over him. But not a finger did she raise to minister to him; she would not have known what to do, so little were her hands accustomed to ministration,—so seldom had they been stretched out to perform the slightest service for any one, even her own son.
We left Madeleine chasing away all heaviness from the soul of Maurice by her sweet singing. She was still at the piano, and he still hanging over her, when Robert burst into the room. He was a man almost stolid in his quietude, and his hurried entrance, and agitated manner, were sufficient to terrify Maurice and Madeleine before he spoke.