“You know I must not disappoint the Queen-Mother,” she said hotly; but a certain trepidation was beginning to flutter her heart.
“You are resolved?”
“Will you stop me?”
“By no means.”
She laughed defiantly.
“O, most certainly I shall go then!”
The Duke rose, and bowed very gravely.
“I wish you a good night, madam,” he said. “Go, and enjoy yourself while you may.”
She bit her lip as he left the room. For a moment she was half resolved to yield her pride to the panic fear that had seized her; but the perverse demon prevailed, and she called back her woman.
She went to the questionable ball, and the night passed for her in a sort of conscious delirium peopled with shapes of gaudy terror. The King, the Queen-Mother, even Saint-Mesgrin himself, seemed forms of demoniac malice, luring her on to her damnation. She longed, and yet feared, to fly the unreal pandemonium. Her own peaceful bed figured to her as something pathetic beyond words—a haven of dear refuge which she had forfeited for ever.