Meanwhile the Count's illness continued its course. All that Sperver had told me verified itself. Sometimes the Count, starting up and leaning on his elbow with outstretched neck and staring eyes, would mutter, "She is coming! She is coming!" Then Gideon would shake his head and climb the signal-tower; but in vain did he look to right and left: the Black Plague was nowhere to be seen.
After long reflection upon this strange malady, I had finally persuaded myself that the Count was deranged. The singular influence which the old creature exerted upon his mind, his alternate periods of delirium and calm, all served to strengthen me in this opinion. "Unknown chains unite his fate with that of the Black Plague," I said to myself. "That woman may have been young and beautiful in the past; who knows?" and my imagination, once launched in this direction, soon built up a romance; but I was careful to mention nothing of my thoughts,—Sperver would never have forgiven me for entertaining suspicions of a relationship between his master and the hag.
During these anxious days, the one bright thing in my life was Odile's presence. Had it not been for this, I doubt if I should longer have preserved any degree of hope.
I know not if I myself quite realized the extent of my growing affection for Odile, but certain it is that with each day her image became more and more identified with all that I held dearest in the world, and as I moved about the old Castle halls and chambers, the library, the drawing-room, the chapel, her fair figure and light step accompanied me in fancy, and I likened her to the delicate, fragrant rose, which in summer blossomed and waved from the rough interstices of the Castle's battlements.
Things were in this pass when one morning, at about eight o'clock, I was walking up and down in Hugh's Tower thinking of the Count's malady, the outcome of which I could foresee no more clearly than before, and cudgelling my wits to determine what was next to be done. Suddenly I was roused from these cheerless reflections by three discreet taps on my door.
"Come in!"
The door opened, and Marie Lagoutte entered, dropping a low courtesy. The worthy woman's arrival annoyed me a good deal; I was on the point of asking her to leave me for the present, when an expression of unusual seriousness on her face aroused my curiosity. She had thrown a large red-and-green shawl over her shoulders, and stood with her lips pursed up and her eyes on the floor. It surprised me not a little to see her, after a moment, approach the door and open it again, apparently to make sure that no one had followed her.
"What does she want of me?" I asked myself. "What do all these precautions mean?" I was puzzled.
"Monsieur," she said at length, drawing nearer me, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you so early in the morning, but I have something important to tell you."
"Pray go on! What is it about?"