In the meantime, Victoire sat talking by Elise's bed, talking softly, rapidly, in what the domestics called her heathen tongue. Victoire was angry, and Elise trembled as she listened. Just so, all her life, had that quiet, angry voice dominated her.
It had needed far less insight than Victoire possessed to learn that there was a new and bitter and unexplained feud between the household and herself and her young mistress.
She had found Elise in bed on the night of her arrival, and a feigned drowsiness on the girl's part had postponed any conversation till the morrow. With the morrow, however, a strange Elise had met her eyes, an Elise thin, worn, with a hunted, frightened look that perplexed Victoire. Elise was suffering from the old enemy, migraine, and preferred not to leave her bed. The waiting woman had descended to the kitchen, and at once became aware of the ban imposed by Mrs. Curnow. The serving girls answered her in yea and nay, and that was the sum of their speech. Neither did they talk in her presence, being only too pleased to carry out to the letter the housekeeper's instructions. Victoire, baffled, ascended to her mistress's room again. Elise's sufferings were not feigned, and she only prayed to be left alone till the pain became easier to bear. She would tell Victoire all the news later on.
Victoire, watching, saw that underlying the girl's physical suffering was the mental strain of some overpowering dread. Elise insisted on keeping the bolts of the chamber drawn; watched the door as footsteps passed without. In vain Victoire prayed for an explanation; at length she lapsed into sullen silence. In the late afternoon, while Elise was dozing Victoire crept downstairs. The kitchen was rocking with joyous sounds; laughter and tears, it would seem, and mid hilarious voices crying out on some unforeseen tremendous event. Victoire listened at the door long enough to disentangle the story wherein Marion's name and Roger's were freely tossed about. The waiting woman had known nothing of the happenings in Garth during the past month. Wrath at Elise's reticence, and amazement at the story she had heard sent her hot-foot to the girl's room. She strode noisily to the bedside, and Elise, waking from a slight doze, started up in speechless terror.
'What is this,' cried Victoire, 'about Roger Trevannion being rescued from gaol by Marion?'
She got no farther. Elise gave a low cry, and sank fainting on her pillow.
The rest of the evening Victoire spent in real anxiety by the girl's bed. With the morning Elise rallied under the effects of the medicine given her, and while Mrs. Curnow and Marion were discussing her in Marion's chamber, Elise gave a faithful history of the neighbourhood during Victoire's absence in Brittany. And Victoire was angry; not, it appeared, because Elise had done Roger a grievous wrong, but because she had made a fatal blunder. Elise's poignant remorse she brushed aside as being of no moment; Elise's terror of Charity Borlase's threat of vengeance she passed by in contempt.
'It is monstrous, inconceivable,' she went on, her voice becoming softer and softer as rage consumed her. 'Here fate has worked in the kindest possible way. That stupid, inquisitive old lawyer Lebrun who might have ruined our plans, has by a merciful Providence been allowed to die. For young Lebrun I do not care a straw. The anxiety of years has been removed. Your inheritance lies clear before you, the d'Artois estates only waiting for a mistress. And just when we could have departed in friendliness from that fool, the Admiral, you have committed this indescribable folly. Why could you not leave Roger Trevannion alone?'
'Did I not tell you,' said Elise sulkily, 'that he spied on me, that he had found out all about the cove and the man?'
'Nonsense! He just happened to pass that way, and he saw you.'