The marquis and his friend got out their books, made a grand parade of being vastly busy--even dug out the blessed 'cello and groaned out an affecting fugue; but expecting you know not what it is impossible to keep the mind from wandering, and Aglaé, try as she would to command herself, jumped up at intervals and strode the polished floor with statuesque arms crossed over the ample bosom, longing for something to occur.
"No news is good news, believe me," the abbé whispered in caution, as hour succeeded hour, and their patience began to ooze. "If she accepts her position without a struggle, a most important point is gained."
Aglaé sniffed fretfully, and passed her square-tipped fingers through the masses of her blue-black hair. "That is mighty well," she said, tartly; "but for the creature to take me back again so quietly, after all that passed, makes me long to pinch, and beat, and slap anything so deplorably spiritless. If she does not do something to-morrow, you will have to lock me up, for I shall not be able to prevent myself from rushing into her room and banging her head against the wall."
"No more blunders!" returned the abbé, sternly. "You have not the skill to read her. Do not forget that it was by your wrong-headedness and bungling that you brought about your own defeat. Remember the terms of the agreement which was to bring you back among us. You were to be guided by me absolutely, and abstain from silly little private plots which could only prove disastrous to us both."
Mademoiselle was silent, and her heavy mobile brows shaped themselves into something like a scowl. She bit her thick red lips and smiled an engaging smile, as she patted the abbé with a fan, playfully. "Of course, I will do as you bid," she said, "but you must not look so cross. I am all gratitude for your many kindnesses and too glad of so skilled a guide." Then as she turned away there were lines about her mouth that were not pretty to look upon, and a sullen shade upon her brow, that was gone again like a summer thunder-cloud.
The classically-modelled bosom of mademoiselle covered a black well of bitterness. She loathed herself for having bungled; she hated Gabrielle with an all-absorbing hate as the author of her discomfiture; she detested the abbé for his domineering ways--and Clovis for not having defended her. She hated all and everyone in that she had accidentally been kept in the dark as to the real owner of the fortune, whereby she had been betrayed into a pitfall.
As she was being ignominiously conducted to Blois, like a thief taken in the act, a boiling geyser of venom had scalded her cheeks; and as she writhed behind a lace handkerchief she registered a vow to be avenged on Gabrielle some day a hundred-fold for that which she had borne at her hands. The knowledge did not tend to appease her wrath that without outside help she would be incapable of fulfilling the vow. The devil will do much to assist his own, but his methods are not artistically complete, and at a critical moment he whisks into space with a grin, leaving his votaries to disaster. Hence it is not always well to depend too much upon the devil. It is a fact worthy of remark that in the legends of his many compacts with mankind it is always assumed that he is honest in his dealings and a model of business-like straightforwardness, while it is the insignificant mortal--mere wax in such hands--who ultimately cheats and circumvents him. Surely this is all wrong. We would not wish the devil to be inconsistent, and it is in the fitness of things that his ardent worshippers should find the ground slippery under foot, and the power in which they trusted--nowhere.
Vainly she revolved the chances of ever returning to Lorge, when suddenly arrived the abbé's first letter, which was quite sticky and mawkish with honey. What was he driving at? He would not write thus without an object. She smiled, locked away the missive, and waited.
Then came the second letter, wherein, to her surprise, she found the gates open again which she feared were hermetically closed. Go back to Lorge? Of course she would, with alacrity, and follow the abbé's instructions, though she understood them not. She knew that the old nuisance was defunct, that the marquise was in full possession. What was this miracle which called her back to Paradise? It mattered not. Her massive foot once more within the threshold, she would profit by the experience of the past, and in the end come out the gainer.
Now you will perceive how odd a mixture was the ex-governess; a woman who hung for awhile in the balance, till the devil inserted a toe and, by its weight, settled the matter. She had genuinely liked the marquis's children, and would, if circumstances so ordained, have gone down to posterity as a typically virtuous second wife, but for that devil's toe!