And remembering her vow, and the threats of her dying victim, she added:
“I must succeed. I have sworn—and I was forgiven under those conditions.”
Astonishment dried the ever ready tears of Aunt Medea.
That her niece, with her dreadful crime still fresh in her mind, could coolly reason, deliberate, and make plans for the future, seemed to her incomprehensible.
“What an iron will!” she thought.
But in her bewilderment she quite overlooked something that would have enlightened any ordinary observer.
Blanche was seated upon her bed, her hair was unbound, her eyes were glittering with delirium, and her incoherent words and her excited gestures betrayed the frightful anxiety that was torturing her.
And she talked and talked, exclaiming, questioning Aunt Medea, and forcing her to reply, only that she might escape from her own thoughts.
Morning had dawned some time before, and the servants were heard bustling about the chateau, and Blanche, oblivious to all around her, was still explaining how she could, in less than a year, restore Marie-Anne’s child to Maurice d’Escorval.
She paused abruptly in the middle of a sentence.