At length, at five o’clock in the morning, the ball broke up, and she hurried home with what feverish haste the crowd would permit her. At bed, in the Hôtel de Guise, she cowered beneath the coverlets, and, the attendants dismissed, lay shivering like a mouse in a trap. She hardly dared to breathe, for fear of evoking some menacing echo. She could have thought that something horrible, like a monstrous cat, crouched outside her door.
All of a sudden her heart seemed to stop. Quick, soft steps were coming down the corridor, and the next moment her door opened, and the Duke, followed by a servitor bearing a bowl of broth on a salver, entered the room.
She uttered a little stifled cry. There was something even horrible and suggestive in the choice of the attendant, who was a small, vacant-faced deaf-mute much employed by her husband on secret services. She sat up in her dishevelled beauty, white and panting.
“O, Henri, mon ami,” she whispered, “you have frightened me so!”
He locked the door behind him and came forward, his eyes brilliant, his lips smiling.
“That is a sad result of my consideration,” he said. “I foresaw very well that your heated blood would prevent you from sleeping, and that a counter caloric would be necessary for your rest. Thank my foresight, madam, and drink down this broth.”
“No, Henri—no, no!”
“Peste! this is a peevish return, ma mie. Are you such a child to cry at your draught, and when it comes in so pleasant a disguise? Why, it needs no physician to see the excited wakefulness in your eyes. Down with it, and you will sleep—take my word for it.”
“Henri, before God I have done no harm!”
“What resistance—out of all proportion with the act! Who said you had done harm—or, if he thought it, would dream of retaliating with such kindness. Come, shut your eyes and gulp.”