“There's another reason why I did n't take them into the secret of your resemblance: I was glad to have them fancy themselves always under my eye. The risk of their giving themselves away to you was very small, for I had arranged a signal, without which they were positively forbidden to show by sign, or look, or word, even when they seemed to be alone with me, that they had any collusion with Mrs. Brane's housekeeper, that they thought her anything in the world but Mrs. Brane's housekeeper. I have my tools pretty well scared, Janice, and I knew they would obey my orders to the letter.”
In this Madame was wrong. Maida and Jaffrey had both disobeyed this order. With no signal from me, they had spoken in their own character to me as though I had indeed been Madame Trème. Like the plans of most generals, Madame's plans had their weak points.
“You know how it all worked,” she went on, unconscious of my mental connotations, “and, then, sacre nom de Dieu! came 'Dabney'!
“God! How the rats scuttled in the house the night after he came! I had Maida to thank for putting me wise. That innocent-faced, slim youngster, with his air of begging-off punishment—I admit, he'd have given me very little uneasiness. You see—”
As she talked I had been watching her with the fixity of my despair, but, a few moments before this last speech of hers concerning Dabney, the flickering of the light across her face had drawn my attention to the second candle. It had burned for more than half its length, and I knew that morning was at hand.
Morning, and a faint hope! The story was not finished, and, though I thought I could tell the rest myself, the woman was so absorbed in the delightful contemplation of her triumph and her cleverness, that I knew she would go on to the end. The wild, resurgent hope deafened me for a few minutes to her low murmur of narration. It had come to me like a flash that, with my legs unbound, I might be able to knock over the candle, put it out, get to my feet in one lightning spring, and make a dash for the hole in the closet. Would there not be a chance of my reaching it alive? Would not the noise of my flight, in spite of my stocking feet and the handkerchief over my mouth, be enough to attract the attention even of a sleeping house, much more certainly, of an awakened and suspicious one? It was, of course a desperate hope, but I could not help but entertain it. If I could force myself to wait till morning had surely come, till there was the stir and murmur of awakening life, surely—oh, dear God!—surely, there might be one little hope of life. I was young and strong and active. I must not die here in this horrible wall. I must not bear the infamy of this woman's guilt. I must not lie dead and unspeakably defiled in the sight of the man I loved.
Paul Dabney's face, haggard, wistful, appeared before me, and my whole heart cried out to its gray and doubting eyes for help, for pity, for belief.
Unluckily, the woman, sensitive as a cat, had become aware of the changed current of my thought, of the changed direction of my look. She, too, glanced at the candle and gave a little exclamation of dismay that stabbed the silence like a suddenly bared knife.
“Bah!” she said, “it must be daylight, and I have n't half confessed myself. Pests on the time! We've been here four or five hours. Are you cramped?”
I was insufferably cramped. The pain of my arms and shoulders, the cutting of the twine about my wrists, were torment. I was very thirsty, too. But nothing was so cruel as the sinking of my heart which her words caused me.