“O!” said Martha, weeping, “chagrin will kill a cat. What is it, do you think, to lie starving and abandoned outside the walls of the paradise you have staked your soul to win?”
“Abandoned!” repeated the other. “It is all his—he knows it—to do what he likes with.”
She had assumed, indeed, that all this time her father was established at the Château. Martha threw up her hands, protesting.
“Do you pretend to believe that he, so proud and stern, has accepted a trust bestowed on him like that? But believe it if you like. He will not be long in unconvincing you.”
“Give me my cloak. Do you hear? My God, how slow you are!”
* * * * * * * *
Thus was negotiated Yolande’s third and final step to self-surrender. She hurried through the familiar streets, a reincarnate ghost, shocked from her grave by a cry as superhuman as the one which stirred the dead in old Jerusalem—a cry of mortal desolation. God spare her the revelation which might have come to them—the knowledge that she had out-died her welcome!
The place seemed strange. There was an air of dust and neglect about the “hôtel.” The face of the woman who answered her summons was unfamiliar—a smug, frowzy, “laying-out” face in suggestion. The girl could hardly articulate the words which strove for utterance on her lips. But, commanding herself, she asked at last, and was a little reassured.
Yes, the Chevalier was in bed, in a poor enough way; but curable, no doubt, by one who knew the secret of his disorder.
She hurried upstairs to him, entered his room with a choking heart. He was lying back, propped on pillows. His face was stern and wintry, with a rime of unshorn hair on its jaws. His eyes, cold and unscrutinising, were like globes of frog-spawn, each with a black staring speck of life for pupil.