After this, he would have seen the woman quietly seat herself at the table, after locking her door, and write a long letter; when, on hearing three low taps in succession, she sprang to her feet, rushed through the bath-room into the room of Manton, and threw herself across the bed, in the precise position in which he left her, and, after three or four violent retchings of the whole muscular system, her face collapsed—grew ashen-white—her lids drooped—her muscles became rigid, and she exhibited all the outward resemblances of suspended vitality. Then the wild Elna rushed in, accompanied by the deluded Moione, and, the moment she looked at the condition of the mother, burst into the most extravagant demonstrations of helpless grief; while Moione, with perfect presence of mind, sprinkled water upon the face and endeavored to restore animation. Soon the street door-bell rings with a peculiar energetic pull, and the frantic Elna at once exclaims, “Manton! dear Manton! he can save my mother; let us run for him.” She seizes the hand of Moione, and—we know the rest!
Shocking, ludicrous, and monstrous as all this may appear to the reader, from his point of view, its only effect upon Manton was necessarily to rebuke the feeling of harsh incredulity which was beginning to become so strong in him, with regard to this inexplicable woman. He was now more troubled and confounded than he had ever been; for it was impossible that a nature like his could ever have voluntarily suspected the unimaginable trickery and collusion which we have traced in this scene; while his common sense was too strong to be in any degree shaken by what was simply unexplained. His magnanimity would not permit him to suspect the full degree of knavery, or his conscientiousness to run such risks, again, of doing grievous injustice, as it now seemed to him he had clearly done in this case. He felt it utterly impossible to treat these phenomena with entire disrespect hereafter, however little influence he might permit them to exert upon his fixed purposes and will.
CHAPTER XX.
SELECT SCENES CONTINUED.
We have lost sight of the other characters in our narrative, and it is now time that we return to them. The reader will remember, in the dark-eyed, sharp-tongued Jeannette of a past scene, the contrasted type of another class of adventuress, whose schemes seemed to have been rapidly culminating. Her success, indeed, seemed now to be absolutely assured; the coveted conquest had been achieved—Edmond was daily at her feet. They were, as it was understood, soon to be publicly married. In the meanwhile, she occupied the best room in the house, and became daily more and more imperious and overbearing towards the woman Marie, as she believed the time to be approaching when she would no longer need her services.
In common with her type the world over, she was incredibly selfish and ungrateful, where she had once fawned and cringed. This little weakness of arrogance she had begun to make some slight exhibitions of, even towards Edmond himself; while, as for the woman Marie, she hectored her on all occasions with the pitiless volubility of a most caustic wit. In this, however, she made a most fatal mistake; she little dreamed of the dark and terrible subtlety of the reptile she thus hourly trampled with her ruthless scorn. She, too, was doomed to feel the fearful poison of the hidden sting she carried, and writhe beneath its hideous tortures.
There had been a more than usually bitter scene between them, in which Jeannette had loftily taunted her with the abjectness of the game she was now playing, in putting forward her own daughter, as the attraction, by which to hold Manton any longer near her. It was not that Madame Jeannette was so much shocked at any villany in the act itself, but that her lofty pride was revolted at the inconceivable meanness it displayed; for, as among thieves and robbers, there is among adventuresses a certain esprit du corps,—and the haughty Jeannette aspired to be a sort of banditti chieftainess in sentiment, and was really a person of refined cultivation, so far as mere intellect was concerned,—it is little wonder, that at such a time of unbounded confidence in the security of her own position, and independence, as she supposed, of any farther aid from the woman, that she should have given way to a natural feeling of disgust and abhorrence, in a moment of irritation. But that taunt proved to her the most deadly error of her life.
The woman, who feared her presence mortally, left the room hurriedly and in silence, shivering in an ague-fit of rage. In another moment she left the house, without speaking a word to any one. Indeed, she seemed incapable of speaking. Her eyes looked bloodshot and hideously awry; the veins of her face swollen as if to bursting, and the skin absolutely livid.
It was a long walk she had set out upon, and gradually the headlong rapidity of her gait subsided into a more measured tread. Her face became pale, as it had before suffused, and a sort of ghastly calmness succeeded. At length, in White Street, she rang the bell of an old-fashioned, but respectable-looking mansion, and shot past the servant in the passage, when, instead of turning into the parlor, she hurried up-stairs to the chamber of the lady.
A somewhat masculine voice answered her tap, and she passed in. A woman of stout symmetrical figure, imperious bearing, whose somewhat coarse features were relieved by the animal splendor of her large black eyes, the luxuriance of her jetty hair, and voluptuous embonpoint of person, greeted her in a short, abrupt style, as she looked up with a cold glance from some lacework over which she was bending.
“What is it, Marie? You look flurried.”