It was nine o'clock, I started off instantly almost wild with joy. She had sent for me. I might still hope.
CHAPTER XXIII
MARGUERITE
On entering the room, I was overcome with astonishment at finding Madame de Pënâfiel in almost the same attitude as when I left her.
Her face was deadly pale, fearful to see; it was like a marble mask.
This sickly paleness that had so suddenly changed her appearance, this expression of grief and resignation, touched me so deeply that all my reasonings and all my miserable suspicions vanished in an instant; it seemed as though I loved her for the first time with the most confiding and sincere love. I had no thought, even of asking her forgiveness for all that was hateful in my behaviour towards her.
I had no thoughts to waste on the miserable past. By I know not what magic, all I thought of now was how to console her for some dreadful grief of which I knew nothing. I was about to throw myself at her knees, when she said, in such an altered voice that I scarcely recognised it, although she attempted to give it an accent of firmness:
"I have sent for you, because I wished to see you for the last time, I wished to ask you the meaning of the strange words you said to me this morning,—that is, if you can explain them to yourself; I wished to tell you—"
Here her pale lips contracted tremulously, with that involuntary movement one feels when with tearful eyes an attempt is made to prevent sobbing. "I wished—" said Madame de Pënâfiel in a faint voice. Then as she could say no more, as she was weeping, she hid her head in her hands, and I only heard these words pronounced in a stifled voice, "Ah, poor unhappy woman that I am!"
"Oh, pardon—pardon, Marguerite!" I exclaimed, falling at her feet; "but do you not know how I love you—how I love you!"