The train speeds on, the hours go by wearily and slowly, and with the passing of every hour the darkness deepens. Madeline, feeling utterly prostrated and paralysed, sits helpless in her corner of the carriage, and Madame de Fontenay sleeps. Her sleep is evidently of the lightest, for whenever the train stops she starts to her feet, rushes to the door and keeps her stand there, while sounds of feet rise and die upon the platform, and the train moves on again. Madeline tries to rise, but her strength fails her; she tries to speak—the words die upon her lips in a faint inarticulate sound—something catches her breath and parches her tongue. Thus the night passes.
Dawn breaks, and almost with the first streak of daybreak the train comes to a stand again, and Madeline is assisted out. Again she tries to speak, but her low faint murmurs are lost amidst the bustle, the confusion, the loud cries of the railway officials. She is hurried through the crowd into a carriage, and before she can collect her wandering senses to protest she is again being whirled rapidly onward. A drive of some minutes; then the carriage passes through a narrow street and stops before a door. Madeline is taken from the carriage, conducted up a flight of stone steps into a finely furnished room.
A man is standing before her. At the sight of his face her dulled senses seem suddenly to brighten. She utters two words, his name—
‘Monsieur Belleisle!’
The Frenchman bows, smiles, and extends both his hands toward her.
‘Madeline,’ he says, ‘welcome, mon ange!’
With a cry Madeline shrinks back, her soul sickens, her dim wandering eyes begin to dilate with fear. She presses both her hands to her throbbing temples, and stares at the Frenchman again.
‘Why are you here, M’sieur?’ she says hurriedly; ‘what has been done to me—where am I?’
The Frenchman bows again.
‘They have brought you to me, mon ange, he says. ‘You are in the house of my very good friend, Madame de Fontenay.’