As for Michelle, she stood as if she were turned to stone. One hand she had partly raised, and she held it unconsciously in the same position, only a few inches from the top of the carved chair on which she had been about to place it. Her gaze sought Hugo Stein’s with a look of wide-eyed horror that was eloquent. Although she spoke not one single word, that look was accusation enough to condemn him a thousand times over. She actually appeared to grow taller as she contemplated him, and the indignation that brought the blood surging to her face, and even to her white throat, seemed as visible in her fair body as the rising of the mercury in a glass tube.
There was now no retreat for Hugo Stein, nor did he wish any. He had this woman—his enemy—in his hand, as he thought, and he had no mercy on her. He advanced a step, with a hypocritical gesture of deprecation, and cried,—
“Ah, Michelle, have I not made all the reparation in my power to you? If it was my fault, as I freely admit, that we had those sweet, stolen hours together, when we saw into each other’s hearts, and each read the other like an open book, have I not said, at the very moment of our detection, that I am ready to marry you the instant the Prince secures a divorce? And you may yet be Lady Egremont. Look not on me so, love; remember it was not always that you so regarded me.”
No one interrupted Hugo Stein, as he made this speech, which seemed in every word the direct inspiration of the Evil One. Berwick was holding Roger Egremont by main force, or Hugo Stein would never have lived to finish it. The Prince still cowered in his chair, breathing heavily, and wiping the cold sweat from his brow.
Suddenly Michelle seemed to come out of the dreadful trance in which Hugo Stein’s words had cast her. The deep, red color still remained in her cheeks, and she could not quite restrain the trembling of her hands, but she relaxed her stony attitude, and, advancing to her husband, said in a quiet, natural voice,—
“This creature is perfectly sane and responsible, and as such, your Highness must now and here, this moment, take steps to punish him. I do not ask his life, although he has forfeited it a thousand times by what he has said; but I do ask—demand—his immediate arrest, and the most rigid imprisonment until he recants. After that, it will be time enough to determine what shall be done with him.”
The Prince sunk farther back into his chair, and looked at Michelle with hatred and suspicion in his eyes. She waited a moment or two, and then repeated, word for word, what she had just said.
The Prince still remaining perfectly inert and speechless, Michelle moved a step nearer to him. She had no more words to waste on him, but her gaze of concentrated scorn and loathing pierced the armor of his dulness and wickedness, and he quailed under it.
Hugo Stein smiled, and approaching her, knelt at her feet. He meant to take her hand and kiss it, but when he was fairly down on his knee, although her hand was within reach of him, he dared not touch it, and scrambled foolishly to his feet. It suddenly came over him that, if he attempted it, he might never get out of that room alive.
There was a perfect silence, except for the faint whisper of music which floated through the open door from the ball-room of the Saloon of the Swans. The celestial thrilling of the violins vibrated so softly in the air that it might have come from another world.