Quantrelle, peering from his box, saw him, and with an oath fell back into the shadow as though hiding from an enemy. Peering from a crack in the door, he waited Frank's departure, and after the carriage had driven away, seized a hat and ran at a mad pace down the narrow street, upsetting children and dogs as he ran.
Josef protested impatiently that it was a badly chosen time for the Countess to be ill, speaking as though Madame de Nemours had personally selected it with criminal thoughtlessness of Katrine, whose début was close at hand; for despite his protests, the girl took the position of nurse, sitting up till all hours of the night, and neglecting her lessons if the Countess needed or desired her services.
The great lady herself, after the danger seemed passed, lay in silence day by day, neither questioning nor explaining. To Katrine, however, explanations were unnecessary, for she understood that to Madame de Nemours the sight of Frank had brought back, with terrible distinctness that other Ravenel who had been summoned to his accounting years before. Just how much Madame de Nemours knew of Frank's attitude to Katrine at this time was never made clear, but
she clung to her adopted child with love and a new comprehension.
But no word passed between them at the time on the subject of either Ravenel, nor did these two great ladies again speak to each other on the subject of Francis Ravenel until the night of the Countess' death. But it was doubtless the bond in suffering, no less than her great love, which made the Countess write to Dermott, the first day of her convalescence, the letter which is set below:
"I am nearing the end, my dear Irish cousin, and would set the house in order before I go. What little I have (it is almost nothing, for the house goes back to the estate at my death and my income has never been large) I want to give to Katrine Dulany. I want her to have, in the old phrase, everything of which I die possessed. And of course I desire you to be the executor. Will you arrange the necessary papers and bring them with you when you come to hear her sing? And I'm hoping I may be still here to greet you and thank you once more for a lifetime of loyalty and devotion."
Sitting in his New York office, Dermott read the lines with a face saddened and gray. But the smile, so peculiarly his own, filled with
cynicism and humor, came to his lips at its close.
"Talk of justice!" he said. "Why, poetry can't touch this! Things always square themselves in the long run, though we may not live to see them do it, but this is one of the times when poetic justice itself got on the job."