“Was it a dream, a nightmare, or a horrible reality, she asked herself as she tried to recall the dreadful things he had said to her and to understand their import. ‘A prisoner, a maniac,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, mother, oh, Mary, that I should come to this. Oh, if I could die, if I could die;’ and in her anguish she looked about her for some means of ending her wretched life. Her New England training, however, was too strong for that. She dared not deliberately and suddenly die by her own hand, but if this thing were true, if she were a prisoner here with no means of escape, she would starve herself to death. They could not compel her to eat, and she would never taste food again until she knew that she was free.
“There was a murmur of voices in the court below, and a sound of wheels crushing over the gravel. Was he really going, and without her? She must know, and springing from her crouching attitude she started for the door, but found it locked from the other side it would seem, and she was a prisoner indeed, and for a time a maniac as well, if sobs and moans and piteous cries for some one to come to her aid could be called proofs of insanity. But no one came, and the hours dragged heavily on till she heard the house clock strike four, and then Celine came in to dress madame for dinner, but Anna waved her off loathing the very thought of food—loathing the glitter and display of the day before—loathing the elegant dresses which Celine spread out before her, hoping thus to tempt her.
“‘Go away, go away, or let me out,’ she cried, while Celine, who could not understand a word, kept at a safe distance, eying her young mistress and thinking it very strange that her master should have two crazy girls in succession—poor Agatha Wynde and this fair American, who Madame Verwest said was his wife.
“‘Perhaps,’ Celine had thought with a shrug of her shoulders; ‘but if the lady is his wife why leave her so quick?’
“But wife or not it was Celine’s business to attend her, and she had no intention of shrinking from her duty.
“‘Poor girl, and so young,’ she thought, and she tried to quiet and conciliate her, and brought out dress after dress and held up to view, until, maddened at the sight of the finery so detestable to her now, Anna shut her eyes, and stopping her ears shrieked aloud in the utter abandonment of despair.
“‘Mon Dieu,’ Celine exclaimed, as she fled from the room in quest of Madame Verwest, whose face was white as marble and whose eyes had in them a look which Celine had never seen before. But she did not offer to go near the lady whom Celine represented as being so bad, nor did she see her during that day or the next. She, too, was acting very queerly, the servants said to each other, as they talked in whispers of the American who refused to touch a morsel of food, and who had not tasted a mouthful since the master went away.
“She was in bed now, Celine said, lying with her face to the wall, and moaning so sadly and saying things she could not understand. ‘If Madame would only go to her and speak one word—Anglaise,’ she said to Madame Verwest on the morning of the third day, and with that same white, pinched look upon her face, madame started at last for the salon.
CHAPTER III.
MADAME VERWEST AND ANNA.
