They went back to the door.
She had performed these actions quietly, without the slightest haste and, from the expression on her face, she might have been doing the most ordinary things in the world. Every gesture was quiet and easy; she gave her orders with no vestige of excitement. But there was a note of triumph in her voice that inspired Ralph with a growing uneasiness, and he was on the point of shouting to warn the person who, in his or her turn, was walking into the trap.
But what was the use? The measures of Josephine had been taken too carefully for his cry of warning to upset them. Besides he did not quite know what to do. All kinds of absurd notions were running through his mind. And then—then it was too late. A groan burst from his lips.
Clarice d’Etigues came through the door!
CHAPTER XII.
MADNESS AND GENIUS
Up to that moment Ralph had been feeling but a moderate apprehension. The danger only threatened him and Josephine. For his part, he trusted to his cleverness and lucky star; and as for Josephine, he knew that she was quite capable of defending herself against Beaumagnan.
But Clarice! Confronted by Josephine Balsamo, Clarice was a mere victim at the mercy of the treachery and cruelty of an enemy. And from that moment his fear was mingled with a kind of physical horror, which actually made his hair stand upright on his head and gave him what is vulgarly called goose-flesh. The implacable face of Leonard also added to his fear. He remembered the Widow Rousselin and her crushed fingers.
Truly he had seen clearly ahead when, coming to the meeting-place an hour before, he guessed that the great battle was before him and that he would come to grips with Josephine. Up to now they had had mere skirmishes, mere affairs of outposts. Now it was a struggle to the death between all these opposing forces; and he was confronting them with his hands bound, a rope round his neck, and this additional enfeeblement with which the coming of Clarice afflicted him.
“I’ve a lot to learn yet,” he said to himself with a groan. “I’m chiefly responsible for this horrible situation, and Clarice is once more my victim.”
The young girl stood speechless before the threat of the revolver which Leonard leveled at her. She had come on light feet, as one comes to meet someone one is glad to see again, and had stumbled into the midst of this scene of violence and crime, while the man she loved stood before her bound and motionless.