But she advanced.
'It is I, Damaris Bérarde,' she said, in a low voice.
She paused in the centre of the room, bewildered by the beauty of decoration which was around her, the intensity of light, the hot-house-like warmth and fragrance, the merciless gaze of the great lady who gazed at her from a distance unmoved and chill as death. The heart of the child beat thickly with terror and emotion:
'Madame—Madame,' she stammered.
In her ignorance she had fancied that because she was received she would be welcomed, that because those doors had unclosed to admit her, that behind them she might hope to find a friend.
This silence, this coldness, this unspoken but all-eloquent disdain made her feel herself the intruder and alien which she was, there in the house of Othmar, in the presence of his wife. Her very soul sank within her.
The cold contemptuous eyes of the woman whom she dreaded swept over her with withering scorn.
'You have mistaken the apartments,' said Nadège, with her cruellest intonation. 'Those of Count Othmar are on the other side of the house.'
The intensity of emotion which possessed Damaris, the intensity of resolve which was in her, the high-strung and overwrought feeling which had nerved her to her present act made her deaf and callous to all that was implied in the words and to the look with which her great rival repulsed her. She crossed the room, and caught the shining satin folds of the gown in her hands and hung on them.
'Let me speak to you once, only this once,' she cried. 'I only came to Paris for that——'