Light as a vapor, rapid as a cloud, the young girl left the Doctor's room, to his eyes radiant with the lustre she left behind her.
IX.—THE CONCIERGERIE.
Eight days after the conversation between Von Apsberg and Marie, the Doctor heard a knock at his door. The latter was reading over for the twentieth time one of the books which had been brought him. This book was Telemachus, the poetical romance one might have fancied Homer himself had dreamed of, and which Virgil and Ovid had written—the book in which morals are enwrapped in so dense a covering of flowers, that a reader often refuses to glance at the serious part of the work, and pays attention only to the graceful superficies. Von Apsberg, however, read the book, not for its own sake, but for the sake of her who had given it to him. Marie had read every page, and her hands had turned over every leaf. This fact gave the history of the son of Ulysses an immense value in the eyes of the young Doctor, and made Telemachus, not Fenelon's, but Marie d'Harcourt's book. The knock at the Doctor's door was followed by the concerted signal. He opened it, and saw the Duke's old secretary. "Monsieur," said he, "as the Duke is absent, I am come to say that Mlle. Marie is ill. I know your care will be useful. She does not, though, send for you, being too feeble to come up stairs, and afraid to ask you to come down."
"Monsieur d'Arbel, let no one into the hotel; and tell Mlle. I will visit her.
"She will see you, Monsieur, in the window next to the drawing-room. I will send the servants out of the way, so that you can see Mlle. Marie without fear of discovery."
All the Secretary's arrangements were carried out, and a few minutes after Matheus waited on his fair patient. She was ill. Since her conversation with the Doctor, her health had really changed. Something mental seemed to influence it. Her complexion, sullied by the tears she had shed since her brother's arrest, was faded, and a flush was visible on her cheeks alone. These symptoms made the Doctor unhappy. He, therefore, approached Marie with great uneasiness.
She said: "How kind you are, Doctor, to risk your liberty: I could not otherwise have seen you. I have not strength enough."
"I will try soon to confer it on you, if God grants me power to attend to you."
"I shall die," said she with an anxious voice, which penetrated the Doctor's very heart, "if you cannot."
"For your sake," said Matheus, "I will defend my liberty by every means in my power, for I wish to restore your health, and preserve an existence indispensable to your father's happiness."