“Perhaps it is on Mr. Roger Egremont’s account,” said Bess, coolly and not without malice. “I remember that he accompanied you upon your marriage journey. He is a man, once known, likely to be remembered.”
Michelle’s face turned scarlet, and her eyes flashed. She half rose from her chair. The insolence of this creature! Rightly was she served in coming there. The desire to hear and know something of Dicky’s sad fate came truly, as Bess had broadly hinted, from that overmastering interest which Michelle had in everybody and everything that Roger Egremont loved. And there had been some faint, wild hope that she could hear something of Roger from Bess. She had not heard one word, or had one line from him since that June evening at la Rivière, when she stood in the doorway of the little room on the bridge, and watched him as he sat by the open window, looking at her with strange, agonized, yet adoring eyes. And she had so longed to know something of him since! The idea that this humble protégée of Roger’s, this Bess Lukens, should dare to question her, the Princess Michelle, had not dawned upon her at first, and now it was impertinent and altogether intolerable. Then suddenly the poignant recollection of a certain recent period in her life flashed over her. What right had she to be haughty to this woman, or to any other woman, after la Rivière? This thought made her sit down again, as pale as death. Perhaps Bess—the whole world—knew about la Rivière. She had fled from it, had done penance for it, and at the same time had used all the considerable wit with which God had endowed her to keep it secret; and this was more for the sake of the man she loved than for herself—and Michelle was the proudest of proud women.
Bess divined, rather than saw, the Princess Michelle’s agitation, and did not feel sorry for her. The silence was prolonged, and neither woman spoke. Bess would not, Michelle could not.
At last Michelle, trembling and fearful, took refuge again in asking about Dicky Egremont, and Bess, having no reason to decline, told her of it briefly. But she could not tell it without being moved herself and moving others, and she softened when she saw tears dropping silently from Michelle’s eyes upon her black mantle.
Bess told all, even the story of her carrying Dicky’s body to Egremont, and the punishment she devised for Hugo Stein. When she reached that part Michelle’s eyes quickly grew bright and dry. She leaned forward, her hand upon the arm of her chair, the color mantling her pale cheeks when Bess described Hugo Stein’s rage and anguish as he lay helpless and prone and cursing upon the ground.
“I punished him all I could, and I can say truly I have not lost one wink of sleep nor ate a morsel the less for it,” concluded Bess, stoutly.
At these words, Michelle rose and grasped her by both hands.
“I thank you,” she said. “I thank you for all you did to Hugo Stein. I thank any man or woman for punishing Hugo Stein. He has injured me in a way no woman could forgive, or should forgive, for he insulted all pure women in me. And he is my enemy and I am his as long as I live.”
“I will cheerfully shake hands with you on that,” cried Bess, and their mutual hatred of Hugo Stein brought them together for a moment, to draw violently apart the next minute because they both loved Roger Egremont. And it came about in this way.
The mention of Hugo Stein and the sharp remembrance of Roger could not put Dicky entirely out of Michelle’s mind. She resumed her chair, and after sitting thoughtfully for a time, Bess meanwhile watching her, she said,—