Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility, proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out, observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet back of the great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him, though she was looking straight before her.
As the sound of Carker’s fastening the door resounded through the intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that last distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled with it, in Edith’s ears. She heard him pause, as if he heard it too and listened; and then came back towards her, laying a long train of footsteps through the silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as he came along. Her hand, for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a knife within her reach upon the table; then she stood as she had stood before.
“How strange to come here by yourself, my love!” he said as he entered.
“What?” she returned.
Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.
“I say,” he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his most courtly smile, “how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessary caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you are the most beautiful, my love) of women.”
Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting on the chair, and said not a word.
“I have never,” resumed Carker, “seen you look so handsome, as you do tonight. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the reality.”
Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping lashes, but her head held up.