'When you find her, Gaston,' she murmured, 'do not be angry with her. It was not her fault. She--he deceived her. See!'
I followed the direction rather of her eyes than her hand, and found beneath the pillow a length of gold chain. 'She left that?' I murmured, a strange tumult of emotions in my breast.
'She laid it there,' my mother whispered. 'And she would have stopped him saying what he did'--a shudder ran through my mother's frame at the remembrance of the man's words, though her eyes still gazed into mine with faith and confidence--'she would have stopped him, but she could not, Gaston. And then he hurried her away.'
'He showed her a token, madame, did he not?' I could not for my life repress the question, so much seemed to turn on the point.
'A bit of gold,' my mother whispered, smiling faintly. 'Now let me sleep.' And, clinging always to my hand, she closed her eyes.
The student came back soon afterwards with some comforts for which I had despatched him, and we sat by her until the evening fell, and far into the night. It was a relief to me to learn from the leech that she had been ailing for some time, and that in any case the end must have come soon. She suffered no pain and felt no fears, but meeting my eyes whenever she opened her own, or came out of the drowsiness which possessed her, thanked God, I think, and was content. As for me, I remember that room became, for the time, the world. Its stillness swallowed up all the tumults which filled the cities of France, and its one interest--the coming and going of a feeble breath--eclipsed the ambitions and hopes of a lifetime.
Before it grew light Simon Fleix stole out to attend to the horses. When he returned he came to me and whispered in my ear that he had something to tell me; and my mother lying in a quiet sleep at the time, I disengaged my hand, and, rising softly, went with him to the hearth.
Instead of speaking, he held his fist before me and suddenly unclosed the fingers. 'Do you know it?' he said, glancing at me abruptly.
I took what he held, and looking at it, nodded. It was a knot of velvet of a peculiar dark red colour, and had formed, as I knew the moment I set eyes on it, part of the fastening of mademoiselle's mask. 'Where did you find it?' I muttered, supposing that he had picked it up on the stairs.
'Look at it!' he answered impatiently. 'You have not looked.'