The woman leaps by him, slamming him against the banisters, and disappears within the room. Camille hears her loud, long moan as she reaches the bedside. He takes three or four audible steps away from the door and towards the stairs, then turns, and darting with the swift silence of a cat surprises her on her knees by the bed, disheveled, unheeding, all moans and tears, and covering with passionate kisses the dead man's—hands only!
To impute moral sublimity to a white man and a quadroon woman at one and the same time and in one and the same affair was something beyond the powers of Camille's small soul. But he gave Attalie, on the instant, full credit, over credit it may be, and felt a momentary thrill of spiritual contagion that he had scarcely known before in all his days. He uttered not a sound; but for all that he said within himself, drawing his breath in through his clenched teeth, and tightening his fists till they trembled, "Oho-o!—Aha!—No wonder you postponed the writing of your will day by day, month by month, year in and year out! But you shall see, my fine Michié White man—dead as you are, you shall see—you'll see if you shan't!—she shall have the money, little or much! Unless there are heirs she shall have every picayune of it!" Almost as quickly as it had flashed up, the faint flicker of moral feeling died out; yet the resolution remained. He was going to "beat" a dead white man.
IV.
PROXY.
Camille glided to the woman's side and laid a gentle yet commanding touch upon her.
"Come, there is not a moment to lose."
"What do you want?" asked Attalie. She neither rose nor turned her head, nor even let go the dead man's hand.
"I must make haste to fulfill the oft-repeated request of my friend here."