These friends in a cordial grasp of their hands, exchanged a solemn oath which bound them to the sacred cause of justice.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CINETTE! CINETTE!
Francine's chamber is dark. The little bed with its white curtains looks as if it were built of marble. There is not a sound. The room is empty. The hours pass on, and still Francine does not return. Her absence excites great wonder in the house, for she is always in very early. "Could anything have happened to her?" one person asked another, but not a voice breathed a word reflecting on the girl's purity. Had any one known where she had gone, some one would have started in search of her. The porter looked once more down the street; the clock had struck twelve. No one came.
In the gray, chilly dawn, a hand slowly pushed open the door of Cinette's room. It is the mad woman. She instinctively knows that Francine never goes to sleep at night without kissing her. She has not felt those dewy lips touch her forehead this night. Restless and uneasy this sick woman, who for years has hardly left her bed, has crawled to Cinette's room. She is familiar with it, for she has many times implored Francine to take her there; and when the girl succeeded in doing so, the old woman laughed to see the curtains so white and the flowers so gay.
She reaches the bed, and feels with her poor withered hands for the girl's head. Cinette is not there, and the poor creature realizes it and weeps in agony. She would have reminded one of an Hindoo idol had she been seen. An hour elapsed, but the poor deformed woman still lies there.
Suddenly she raises her head. She hears rapid steps on the stairs. When Cinette went out she had locked the door of her room. The porter to be sure had another key. When some one knocked at the porter's lodge he was not yet up, and answered gruffly that the Marquise had not come in and the old woman could not move. There were several rapid knocks on the door.
"Open! open!" a voice called.