“Have you no light? You must get a light, Gregoire.”
“Impossible, miladi; dere 's nobody livin' in dese houses at all.”
“Then you must go back to the inn for one; we 'll wait here till you return.”
A faint shriek from Mademoiselle Celestine expressed all the terror such a proposition suggested.
“Miladi will be lost if she remain here all alone.”
“Perdue! sans doute!” exclaimed Celestiue.
“I am determined to have my way. Do as I bade you, Gregoire; return for a light, and we'll take such shelter as this door affords in the meanwhile.”
It was in no spirit of general benevolence that Gregoire tracked his road back to the “Russie,” since, if truth must be told, he himself had extinguished the light, in the hope of forcing Lady Hester to a retreat. Muttering a choice selection of those pleasant phrases with which his native German abounds, he trudged along, secretly resolving that he would allow his mistress a reasonable interval of time to reflect over her madcap expedition. Meanwhile, Lady Hester and her maid stood shivering and storm-beaten beneath the drip of a narrow eave. The spirit of opposition alone sustained her Ladyship at this conjuncture, for she was wet through, her shoes soaked with rain, and the cold blast that swept along seemed as if it would freeze the very blood in her heart.
Celestine could supply but little of comfort or consolation, and kept repeating the words, “Quelle aventure! quelle aventure!” in every variety of lamentation.
“He could easily have been back by this,” said Lady Hester, after a long pause, and an anxious attention to every sound that might portend his coming: “I 'm certain it is full half an hour since he left us. What a night!”