On a black slab lay extended the nude limbs of a woman who had been taken from life before she had reached its noon, whilst she might have been full of strength and lusty joy. They were bloodless to the view, but round and beautiful of proportion, and clean of colour as a statue of purest marble by a master hand. The head was pillowed on a luxuriant mass of wet, matted raven hair. There was a smile on the face (which was wickedly handsome, as the soldier had described it), even in death, and a proud, disdainful curl had left its unchangeable impress on the mouth.
'By Jove, it is Marguerite!' cried O'Hara involuntarily.
At the same instant the little grisette, whom he had helped to a place, turned pale and trembled, and falling back in a faint, sank into his arms as she murmured from between her white lips, 'Merciful God! Caroline, poor Caroline!'
CHAPTER III.
LE VRAI N'EST PAS TOUJOURS VRAISEMBLABLE.
THE crowd immediately gathered round the fainting grisette as she lay in the arms of our friend, forgetting, in their eagerness for this fresh excitement, the morbid spectacle on the slab. With the same idle gaze of curiosity which they had bestowed on the dead girl they turned to the inanimate form of the living. O'Hara gently permitted the body to lapse on the ground, and quickly divesting himself of his coat, folded it in the shape of a bolster under her head—and then looked at her and felt embarrassed how further to act. Above all things he abhorred a 'scene' and here he was fairly constrained to sit for one of the leading figures in the picture. He lost his presence of mind amid the multifarious inquiries and suggestions and proffers of help of the craning spectators who pressed upon him and his breathless charge; and, to complete his humiliation, he awoke to the fact that he had a piece of canvas sewed on where the back ought to have been in the waistcoat he exposed, just as a well-dressed lady put a bottle of eau de Cologne into his hand, telling him to apply it to the lips of the sufferer. How soon he might himself be in a condition to require a restorative we might have to tell, had not an imperious voice commanded the crowd to make way, and a man, following it into the centre of the group, proceeded to put his orders into force by a vigorous and skilful application of his elbows.
'Stand back,' he cried; 'all the creature wants is air, and ye're getting up a competition to smother her.'
Turning to one of the busiest on-lookers, he urged him towards the door of the greffier's office, directing him, as he was a smart fellow, to fetch a carafe of cold water in a hurry; and then, leaning over O'Hara, as he held the pungent bottle to the girl's nostrils, he said in English, accompanying his words with an impatient gesture, 'Drat that stuff; here's what'll revive her!' at the same time producing a brandy-flask.
O'Hara looked up and recognised the sturdy stranger of the frieze coat.
'Well, how long will you keep staring at me? Ay, boy, that's right with the water—see, she opens her eyes. Now to slip a little of the water of life down her throat. Keep her mouth open with your penknife. Ho, ho! she'll come round in a jiffy. See here, mister, you with your coat off, will you help me to trundle my sister out of this infernal hole? Catch up her legs, man. Hang it! one would think you were handling glass marked "This side uppermost."'
Partly in obedience to this torrent of words, and partly because he had, for the time being, no will of his own, his self-possession completely gone, O'Hara obeyed the stranger, and between them the girl, still pale and prostrate, was lifted to the door. The stranger hailed a hackney carriage which was passing, and, helping the grisette in and pushing O'Hara after her, he mounted beside the coachman, and drove in the direction of the Place before the gate of Notre Dame.