“It is Norbert,” cried Mademoiselle de Laurebourg, and snatching the little bottle from the Counsellor’s hands, she thrust it into her bosom. The door flew open, and Norbert appeared on the threshold. Diana and the Counsellor both uttered a shriek of terror. His livid countenance seemed to indicate that he had passed through some terrible scene; his gait was unsteady, his clothes torn and disordered, and his face stained with blood, which had flowed from a cut over his temple. Daumon imagined that some outrage had taken place.
“You have been wounded, Marquis?” said he.
“Yes, my father struck me.”
“Can it be possible?”
“Yes, he struck me.”
Mademoiselle Diana had feared this, and she trembled with the terror of her vague conjectures as she made a step towards her lover.
“Permit me to examine your wound,” said she.
She placed both her hands at the side of his head and stood on tip-toe, the better to inspect the cut. As she did so, she shuddered; an inch lower, and the consequences might have been fatal.
“Quick,” she said, “give me some rags and water.”
Norbert gently disengaged himself. “It is a mere nothing,” said he, “and can be looked after later on. Fortunately I did not receive the whole weight of the blow, which would otherwise have brought me senseless to the ground, and perhaps I should have been slain by my father’s hand.”