Maurice had echoed the words, "She is not dead," pressing his own burning lips upon those pale, feebly-stirring, cold ones, and catching the first returning breath that Madeleine drew. At that long, fervent kiss her eyes unclosed; they saw his face and nothing beside.
"Madeleine, my beloved, you are spared to me! My life returns now that you are given back."
Madeleine faintly murmured "Maurice," and then her eyes wandered from his face to those around her, and she added, "What is it?"
Bertha's transition from grief to joy was so clamorous that no one could answer. If Gaston had not restrained her, Madeleine's bandage would have been endangered by the young girl's vehement embraces, which were mingled with incoherent exclamations of rapture.
"What is it?" again questioned Madeleine; but, as she spoke her eye caught sight of the fallen curtain, thrown in a heap, and remembering the recent danger, she turned quickly to the countess, and said, feebly,—
"You are not hurt, aunt,—madame? The shaft did not strike you,—did it?"
The countess felt that a shaft had fallen and struck her, indeed, but not the one Madeleine meant. She stretched out her hand and clasped that of her niece as she said,—
"I am uninjured, Madeleine; it is you who received the blow. God grant that this may be the last that will fall upon you through me! It is in vain to struggle against His will. It was His hand,—I feel it! I resist no longer!"
She looked toward Maurice, who exclaimed joyfully, "My dear, dear grandmother, have I regained Madeleine doubly to-day? Do you mean"—