For days and days after the tremendous realisation of her loss had been forced upon her, she lay upon her bed, tossing in dumb and tearless torture: then her concentrated madness took a new and sudden turn; she shrieked and wailed, she cursed heaven, and earth, and men, and even Edmond, with the lurid curses of madness, while she kissed the hand and blessed the ministerings of the soft-gliding genius of her ruin, who hung with a cunning science about her suffering bed.
But Jeannette was clearly not the stuff to die of any one passion less intense than her love of self. She came through at last, haggard and broken, and humble enough, but she received her pension nevertheless, and soon after sailed for England, leaving the field to her stronger rival, to whom Edmond was soon afterwards married.
CHAPTER XXI.
SELECT SCENES CONTINUED.
We have frequently mentioned the eccentric Dr. Weasel in the course of this narrative. Another scene will enlighten the reader somewhat in regard to the yet undefined character of his relations towards the woman Marie. He had just entered her room; and approaching with a quick, nervous step, he said to her in an irritated and squeaking voice—
“Marie Orne, I tell you I must have my money back again! I did not give it to you, when I advanced it to get you started in business. You were to have returned it to me, long since! You have been doing well now for two years and more, and yet instead of returning the money I first advanced to you, you have been borrowing more than double as much! At this moment you have more than five hundred dollars belonging to me, of which you have never returned me a cent! Yet I have been suffering for money, for months, and you know it! You know I cannot receive remittances now, since the death of my grandmother, till the settlement of our estate! I am tired of this treatment, Madam! I will have my money!”
The Doctor, who had been walking hurriedly up and down the room during this speech, now paused abruptly before the woman, who had quietly continued her writing—
“Do you hear me?” he said angrily, in a loud, sharp tone. “Where is the money you have plundered me of?”
The woman now looked up, staring at him with wide-open eyes, that expressed the most unutterable astonishment, while, at the same moment, a bland smile broke across her face, while she exclaimed in a low, sweet, reproachful voice—
“Why, Doctor E. Willamot Weasel! What can you mean? My dear friend—I plunder you? You forget yourself! Remember what a feeble child you were—how sad, how sick, how despairing, when I took hold of you, as the tender nurse does the dying foundling at her door—”
“I believe you had no door, till I gave you one!” interrupted the Doctor, while his sharp little eyes shot fire.