"How dare you, sirrah, hold such language to me—how dare you? Another word, and I denounce you to my husband—ay, sir, I—to Monsieur Le Prun. I defy you."
Blassemare had started to his feet, very much astonished; his cheek tingling, his self-love stung to the quick. But he was too experienced in such affairs to indulge any tragical emotions on the occasion. He stared at her for a minute, with an expression of absurd bewilderment. There was no very graceful exit from the undignified predicament to which he had, like a simpleton, reduced himself. Recovering his self-possession, however, he broke into a cold laugh, and said—
"Madame, I have misunderstood you with a vengeance; I pray you believe that you have misunderstood me. We now, however, thoroughly understand one another. I keep your little secret on condition that you keep mine."
Lucille deigned no answer; but the compact had, it seemed, been silently ratified by her, for Le Prun and Blassemare continued to be the best friends imaginable.
Blassemare was not vindictive, but he was exquisitely vain. He had a good-humored turn for mischief, too; and, notwithstanding the repulse he had experienced, or perhaps, such is human perversity—in consequence of it—he was more than ever resolved to pursue his guilty designs upon the heart of Madame Le Prun.
His hands were, therefore, tolerably full; for he had not only this little affair to attend to, but to exercise his vigilance to prevent De Secqville's hearing of his breach of faith, and at the same time to confirm and exasperate, in furtherance of his own schemes, the suspicions of Monsieur Le Prun.
This latter task circumstances rendered an easy one, and Blassemare executed it without giving any definite direction to Le Prun's inflamed jealousy. So far, indeed, was he from suspecting the identity of the criminal, that he brought De Secqville two or three times to sup at the Chateau des Anges, an act of temerity which excited Blassemare's anxiety and vigilance. That gentleman had therefore kept so close and constant a watch upon the handsome Marquis, that he had not, upon any of these occasions, an opportunity of exchanging a single sentence with Madame Le Prun.
The occasional appearance of De Secqville at the Chateau des Anges was a sufficient proof that Blassemare had kept the secret with fidelity. Madame Le Prun, therefore, was far from suspecting that he was in secret the inspiring cause of that ominous restraint, the pressure of which she began to feel every day more and more severely. One by one her personal attendants were removed. Gradually she felt the process of isolation shrouding her from the eyes of her fellow-creatures. Her walks were prescribed and restricted; and with bitter resentment she perceived that she was subjected to the outrage of a systematic espionage. The face of M. Le Prun was always darkened with hatred and menace. Every day made his power more directly felt, and more nearly reduced her to his solitary, rare, and sinister companionship. At last a note, in M. Le Prun's hand, upon her table, announced in a few barbarous and insulting words that his niece Julie had been removed, by his orders, from the contagion of a companionship unfit for innocence. This was to Lucille a frightful blow. Her solitude was now virtually complete. Her own old faithful servant, Marguerite, had been withdrawn; and a tall pale Norman matron, taciturn and sardonic, was now her sole attendant. It was plain, too, that M. Le Prun had gradually removed his establishment from the Chateau des Anges. The gay and gorgeous staff of servants and grooms had disappeared. The salons, halls, and lobbies of the vast mansion were silent as the chambers of a mausoleum—the outer courts still and deserted. She was becoming the prisoner of an enraged tyrant, alone, in the midst of an impenetrable and funereal solitude.
In fact, many prisoners of state enjoyed a great deal more liberty than she; for not only was she restricted to her own apartment, but confined to the range of the small court which lay immediately under her own windows.
The indignation and fury which these outrages inspired, by degrees gave place to something like despair and panic. With the exception of her ill-looking handmaid, and the no less sinister-visaged sentinel who stealthily watched her movements, and between both of whom a sort of ominous correspondence seemed to be carried on by signals, she had latterly seen no one, but at rare intervals the hated and dreaded apparition of Le Prun at a distance, and Blassemare once or twice.