“‘Now let me sit here in quiet, and do you tell me about this Agatha, whose ghost is said to haunt the chateau. Was she pretty, and when did she die?’
“This she said to Celine, who, always ready and glad to talk, began the story of Agatha so far as she knew it, telling of her arrival at the chateau one wild rainy night, of her deep melancholy and sweet, quiet ways, of her lapse into insanity, her pleadings to go home to Normandy, and of her subsequent death with the words upon her lips, ‘Je vais revoir ma Normandie.’
“‘She was not like you, madame,’ Celine said. ‘She was the people like me, and so she talked with me more than ladies might. There was no real marriage, only a sham, a fraud she said; but she was innocent, and I believe she told the truth; but Mon Dieu, what must such girls expect when gentlemen like monsieur entice them away from home:’ and Celine shrugged her shoulders meaningly, as if to say that the poor dead girl beneath the grass had received only her due in betrayal and ruin.
“‘Yes, don’t talk any more, please. The pain has come back, and I believe I’m dying,’ Eugenie gasped, while both Anna and Celine knelt by her, rubbing her again, and loosening her dress until the color came back to her face and she declared herself able to return to the chateau. ‘Don’t talk of my illness and bring everybody around me,’ she said to her attendants. ‘I cannot bear people when I’m so. Send me Elise, and leave me alone. She knows what to do.’
“They got her to her room, and called her maid, who said she had seen her thus a hundred times, and so Anna felt no particular alarm at the sudden illness, and did not think to connect it in any way with that lonely grave in the yard, or dream of the agony and remorse of the proud woman who lay upon her face writhing in pain and moaning bitterly:
“‘Ma Petite, oh, ma Petite. I have found thee at last, sent to thy early grave by me—by me. Alas, if I too could die and be buried there beside thee.’
“Eugenie did not appear at dinner that evening. She was suffering from a severe nervous attack, Elise said, and the attack kept her in her room for three days, during which time she saw no one but her maid, who reported her to the servants as in a dreadful way, walking her room day and night, eating nothing, but wringing her hands continually, and moaning:
“‘Oh, how can I bear it—how can I bear it, and live?’
“Once Mr. Haverleigh attempted to see her, but she repulsed him angrily.
“‘No, no, tell him to go away. I cannot, and will not see him,’ she said; and her eyes glared savagely at the door outside which he was standing.