The Cryptogram: A Novel

by James De Mille

After this excitement she kept her bed for a few days. Lord Chetwynde heard that she was ill without expressing any emotion. When at length he saw her he spoke in his usual courteous manner, and expressed his pleasure at seeing her again. But these empty words, which used to excite so much hope within her, now fell indifferently on her ears. She had made up her mind now. She knew that there was no hope. She had called to her side the minister of her vengeance. Lord Chetwynde saw her pale face and downcast eyes, but did not trouble himself to search into the cause of this new change in her. She seemed to be growing indifferent to him, he thought; but the change concerned him little. There was another in his heart, and all his thoughts were centered on that other.

After the masquerade Lord Chetwynde had hurried out to the villa, on the following day, to make inquiries about her health. He found Zillah still much shaken, and exhibiting sufficient weakness to excite his anxiety. Which of the many causes that she had for agitation and trouble might now be disturbing her he could not tell, but he sought to alleviate her troubles as much as possible. His departure for India had to be postponed, for how could he leave her in such a state? Indeed, as long as Obed Chute remained in Florence he did not see how he could leave for India at all.

CHAPTER LXVI.

FAITHFUL STILL.

When Hilda sent off her note to Gualtier she felt certain that he would come to her aid. All that had passed between them had not shaken the confidence which she felt in his willingness to assist her in a thing like this. She understood his feelings so perfectly that she saw in this purpose which she offered him something which would be more agreeable to him than any other, and all that he had ever expressed to her of his feelings strengthened this view. Even his attempts to gain the mastery over her, his coercion by which he forced from her that memorable promise, his rage and his menaces at Lausanne, were so many proofs of his love for her and his malignant hate to Lord Chetwynde. The love which she had once despised while she made use of it she now called to her aid, so as to make use of it again, not thinking of what the reward would be which he would claim, not caring what his hope might be, indifferent to whatever the future might now reveal, and intent only upon securing in the best and quickest way the accomplishment of her own vengeful desires.

This confidence which she felt in Gualtier was not unfounded, nor was her hope disappointed. In about a week after she had sent her letter she received an answer. It was dated Florence. It showed that he had arrived in the city, and informed her that he would call upon her as soon as he could do so with safety. There was no signature, but his handwriting was well known to her, and told her who the writer was.

About an hour after her receipt of the letter Gualtier himself was standing in her presence. He had not changed in appearance since she last saw him, but had the same aspect. Like all pale and cadaverous men, or men of consumptive look, there could be scarcely any change in him which would be for the worse. In Hilda, however, there was a very marked change, which was at once manifest to the searching gaze of his small, keen eyes as they rested upon her. She was not, indeed, so wretched in her appearance as on that eventful day when she had astonished him by her arrival at Lausanne. Her face was not emaciated, nor were her eyes set in dark cavernous hollows as then, nor was there on her brow the stamp of mortal weakness. What Gualtier saw in her now had reference to other things. He had seen in her nervousness and agitation before, but now he marked in her a loss of all her old self-control, a certain feverish impatience, a wild and unreasoning eagerness--all of which seemed to rise out of recklessness and desperation. Her gestures were vehement, her words careless and impassioned in tone. It was in all this that he marked the greatness of the change in her. The feverish warmth with which she greeted him was of itself totally different from her old manner, and from its being so different it seemed to him unnatural. On the whole, this change struck him painfully, and she seemed to him rather like one in a kind of delirium than one in her sober senses.

"When I last bade you good-by," said she, alluding in this very delicate way to their parting at the hotel in Lausanne, "you assured me that I would one day want your services. You were right. I was mad. I have overcome my madness. I do want you, my friend--more than ever in my life before. You are the only one who can assist me in this emergency. You gave me six months, you remember, but they are not nearly up. You understood my position better than I did."

She spoke in a series of rapid phrases, holding his hand the while, and looking at him with burning intensity of gaze--a gaze which Gualtier felt in his inmost soul, and which made his whole being thrill. Yet that clasp of his hand and that gaze and those words did not inspire him with any pleasant hope. They hardly seemed like the acts or words of Hilda, they were all so unlike herself. Far different from this was the Hilda whom he had known and loved so long. That one was ever present in his mind, and had been for years--her image was never absent. Through the years he had feasted his soul in meditations upon her grand calm, her sublime self-poise, her statuesque beauty, her superiority to all human weakness, whether of love or of remorse. Even in those collisions into which she had come with him she had risen in his estimation. At Chetwynde she had shown some weakness, but in her attitude to him he had discovered and had adored her demoniac beauty. At Lausanne she had been even grander, for then she had defied his worst menaces, and driven him utterly discomfited from her presence. Such was the Hilda of his thoughts. He found her now changed from this, her lofty calm transformed to feverish impatience, her domineering manner changed to one of obsequiousness and flattery. The qualities which had once excited his admiration appeared now to have given way to others altogether commonplace. He had parted with her thinking of her as a powerful demon, he came back to her finding her a weak woman.

But nothing in his manner showed his thoughts. Beneath all these lay his love, and the old devotion manifested itself in his reply.