Brusquely Cosmo stepped out into the outer gallery. Listening to M. de Montevesso was no pleasure. The Count accompanied him as far as the head of the great staircase and stayed to watch his descent with a face that expressed no more than the face of a soldier on parade, till, all at once, his eyes started to roll about wildly as if looking for some object he could snatch up and throw down the stairs at Cosmo's head. But this lasted only for a moment. He reëntered the anteroom quietly and busied himself in closing and locking the door with care. After doing this he approached the figure on the bench and stood over it silently.
VII
The old woman pushed back her shawl and raised her wrinkled soft face without much expression to say:
"The child has been calling for you for the last hour or more."
Helion de Montevesso walked all the length of the anteroom and back again; then stood over the old woman as before.
"You know what she is," she began directly the Count had stopped. "She won't give us any rest. When she was little one could always give her a beating but now there is no doing anything with her. You had better come and see for yourself."
"Very unruly?" asked the Count de Montevesso.
"She is sixteen," said the old woman crisply, getting up and moving towards the stairs leading to the upper floor. A stick that had been lying concealed in the folds of her dress was now in her hand. She ascended the stairs more nimbly than her appearance would have led one to expect, and the Count of Montevesso followed her down a long corridor, where at last the shuffle of her slippers and the tapping of her stick ceased in front of a closed door. A profound silence reigned in this remote part of the old palace which the enormous vanity of the upstart had hired for the entertainment of his wife and his father-in-law in the face of the restored monarchies of Europe. The old peasant woman turned to the stiff figure which, holding the candelabra and in its laced coat, recalled a gorgeous lackey.
"We have put her to bed," she said, "but as to holding her down in it, that was another matter. Maria is strong but she got weary of it at last. We had to send for Father Paul. Shameless as she is she would not attempt to get out of her bed in her nightdress before a priest. The Father promised to stay till we could fetch you to her, so I came down, but I dared not go further than the anteroom. A valet told me you had still a guest with you, so I sent him away and sat down to wait. The wretch to revenge himself on me put out the lights before he went."
"He shall be flung out to-morrow," said M. de Montevesso in a low tone.