"Yes, she wants to see you," he replied, holding the door open, and speaking in the dull even tone of one who knows all.
After such a scene as we had passed through comes reaction; I was worn out and I went with him mechanically, thinking rather of the past than the present. But no sooner was I over the threshold of the next room, which, unlike that I had left, was brilliantly lit by candles set in sconces, the shutters being closed, than I came to myself with a shock. Propped up with pillows on a bed opposite the door, so that I met her eyes and had a full view of her face as I entered, lay Madame St. Alais; and I stood. Her face was white with a red spot burning in each cheek; her eyes matched the colour in brilliance; but it was neither of these things that brought me up suddenly, nor--though I noticed it with foreboding--the way in which she plucked at the coverlet when she spoke. It was something in her expression; something so unfitting the occasion, so bizarre and light that I stood appalled.
She saw my hesitation, and in a gay and slightly affected tone, that in a moment told the story, a tone more dreadful under the circumstances than the most pathetic outbursts, she reproached me with it. "Welcome, M. le Vicomte," she said. "And yet I am glad to see that you have some modesty. We will not be hard on you, however. A late repentance is better than none, and--where is my fan, Denise? Child, my fan!"
Denise rose with a choking sound from her seat by the bed, and must, I think, have broken down; we had all nerves worn to the last thread. But Madame Catinot saved the situation. Hastily reaching a fan from a side table she laid a firm hand on the younger woman's shoulder as she passed, and gently pressed her back into her seat.
"Thank you, my dear," Madame St. Alais said, playing an instant with the fan, and smiling from side to side, as I had seen her smile a hundred times in her salon. "And now, M. le Vicomte," she continued with ghastly archness, "I think that you will have the grace to say that I was a true prophet?"
I muttered something, heaven knows what; the scene, with Madame's smiling face, and the others' bowed shoulders and averted eyes, was dreadful.
"I never doubted that you would have to join us," she went on, with complacency. "And if I were cruel, I should have much to say. But as you have returned to your allegiance before it was too late, we will let bygones be bygones. His Majesty is so good that--but where are the others? We cannot proceed without them."
She looked round with a touch of her native peremptoriness. "Where is M. de Gontaut?" she said. "Louis, has not M. de Gontaut arrived? He promised to be here to witness the contract."
Louis, from his place by one of the closed windows, where he stood with Father Benôit and the surgeon, answered in a strained voice that he had not yet arrived.
Madame seemed to find something unnatural in his tone and our attitude, she looked uneasily from one to the other of us. "There is nothing the matter, is there?" she said, flirting her fan more vigorously. "Nothing has happened?"