“All this may be very true, Marie,” said the other, with a cool smile, “but knowing you as I do, I should prefer to be informed specifically in what this insult consisted. Tell me what she said and did, give me all the circumstances in detail, and then I shall understand your motive and know how far we can act together!”
The woman paused an instant as if in hesitation, her eye grew hideously askance once more, her forehead blazed, and her lips quivered, as glancing furtively around the room, with a stealthy movement, she glided closely to the side of the French-woman, and whispered in her ear, with purple lips, a rapid, eager communication for a few moments, and then sank back into her chair again, pale as death and seemingly exhausted.
The French-woman bent her ear to listen, with her needle suspended in her hand, and as the other finished, a fierce, electric gleam darted from her eye, and with untrembling fingers she finished her stitch, while she said in a low tone—
“That will do, Marie; that’s enough to secure your faith. We will punish her. Edmond shall come back to my feet!”
The results of the last scene may be rapidly traced. Very soon there commenced a series of mysterious calls by a dark-veiled lady, whom Manton was induced to suppose was a patient who was desirous to retain her incognito. She came and went always at unusual hours, and though a vague suspicion once or twice forced itself upon his mind that there was something unusual going on, yet in his pre-occupation it created but little attention. But we, who have undertaken from the first to be somewhat closer and more widely-awakened observers than he, can see something more significant than met his eye in all this.
An accidental meeting in one of the rooms of the house soon occurred between Edmond and Eugenie, upon the privacy of which we are not disposed to intrude. Let the consequences suffice.
In a few weeks the imperious tone of Jeannette, who, too, had been kept entirely ignorant of what was going on, was lowered, though the covert and sardonic vindictiveness of her wit had clearly lost nothing of its directness and ferocity even; because, as she daily became less exultant, the moroseness of her temper increased.
It would be anything but a pleasant picture to unveil the harrowing struggles of such a woman to regain an ascendency, which she felt was daily driven by some malign and invisible power beyond the breath of her heretofore ascendant will. She only felt its devastation amidst her towering hopes, and the moon-stone battlements of regal schemes that she had nourished in daring fancies. She only felt the shadow of desolation on her soul, but her vision was not strong enough to see the demon wing that threw it.
She was passing through the valley and the shadow, yet knew not where to aim the lightning of her curse. She sank at last, bewildered, stunned, and utterly humiliated; for she had crawled upon her very knees to Edmond to plead for mercy, but he was inexorable. The old passion had been restored to his life, and her proud, voluptuous rival held the sensual philosopher a prisoner, “rescue or no rescue,” once more.