Then she gave him her name and address, said that she had known the dead man from her childhood, and had come to nurse him because she had understood that he was all alone.
The consul, a simple sturdy man of business, was deeply moved. When he had executed the few formalities necessary, and affixed his seal to the despatch-box, he begged this charming and compassionate stranger to allow him the honor of driving her back to her hotel.
“Why was not his daughter with him?” she said to the consul. “Oh, I know why—they have quarrelled; but it is such a sacred tie! Surely——”
“The Countess Olga has always been most generous to her father, madame,” replied the gentleman. “But it was of no use. It was pouring money into sieve. I have telegraphed to her. She will probably come in person, but she cannot be here before another day at the least.”
“How fortunate I had the start of her!” thought the ministering angel of this deathbed, as she watched the consul affix his seals to the old despatch-box, of which the only contents of any value were lying safe against the satin and lace of her stays. She would have infinitely preferred slipping away unseen from that sorry house, and finding her way as she could, on foot or by cab, back to her hotel unseen by anyone. But her mind quickly grasped all the points of a question, and she immediately perceived that her visit to be creditable must be unconcealed, and when the fascinated official offered to drive her back to her hotel, she accepted the offer, realizing all the solidity, veracity, and respectability which his countenance of her conferred. She left the woman of the house in charge of the dead body, and with an aureole of virtue round her head descended the stair which she had ascended on so questionable an errand.
CHAPTER XLIII.
When she reached the hotel, everyone was already gone to the concert at the Casino; it was Thursday night; she got to her own rooms unperceived, and told her maid that she had lost her way in the olive-woods, was terribly tired, and only wished for some hot soup and a cutlet, she was indeed fatigued and worn out; she had found the good consul’s cab dreadfully slow and rickety; his great coat had smelt unpleasantly of very coarse tobacco, and the night was cold and the way into the town seemed endless.
She did not venture to look at the packet she had stolen until she was safely in the warmth of her bed, with a reading lamp beside her, and an eider-down quilt over her. She did not feel at ease, and she was haunted by vague terrors. The steel-blue eyes of the dying man haunted her. Hatred, powerless, but only the more intense for its impotency, had stared at her with a look which she felt that she would never forget if she lived for a hundred years. Moreover, she knew that she had committed a crime, or what people would call a crime if they knew of it. She knew that it had been an ugly thing to do; the kind of thing which people who are well-born and well-bred do not do. There is a class of sins which are well-bred; there is another class which is caddish. She knew that this act of hers belonged to the latter category.
Nevertheless, she opened the packet when she was quite safe from interruption, whilst the mellowed light of her reading lamp shed its soft radiance on her pillow, and the billets of olive-wood were burning fragrantly upon the hearth. Her pulses beat unevenly as she opened it, for it was very possible that she had gone through all this agitation and danger quite uselessly. There might be nothing in it whatever of interest or value.
She undid it with great care so as to leave the seals unbroken. Oddly enough, there recurred to her at that moment the memory of her little son looking at her with his sorrowful angry eyes and saying: