There was an uneasy look in Madame de Beaumont's eyes for a second or two as they followed the receding figure. Then with an affectation of ordinary solicitude she turned and said to me,
"I did not know that anyone was here. We disturbed Bayard at his studies I am afraid."
"Let us go somewhere else," I suggested a little eagerly.
"Oh," she answered, shaking her head significantly, "that would not bring him back I assure you, we may as well be comfortable here as elsewhere, now. He is such a queer boy."
She was evidently under the impression that I knew something definite about this person who, in spite of his suggestive name, seemed timid and strange as a fawn, but as I had a burning desire to know everything about Hortense's illness I was not tempted to indulge this secondary curiosity, so his name was summarily abandoned for the dear invalid's.
Madame de Beaumont could not account in any definite or satisfactory manner for her daughter's present condition. It was the result, she said, of a growing indisposition that had stolen over her lately, and this was why her fears had such little hope lest her complaint should prove a constitutional decline that would baffle all the skilful efforts of her physicians.
"She began," the mother said in a voice of sobs, "by renouncing all her pleasures. She did not care for one thing and was too tired for another. She took no interest in anything that had distracted her before; she would only read, and write letters to you and in the end she renounced even these relaxations. The doctors suspect that some mental strain may have been worrying her, but I can think of none. All that we could do to make her happy and comfortable we did, and I have never heard her complain, or wish for anything that she had not already. What will I do if I lose her?" Madame de Beaumont suddenly cried, burying her face in her hands and weeping bitterly. "Her father, you know, died of consumption," she added in a hopeless whisper, raising her head and looking at me sorrowfully.
It was a sad scene and one that I was not prepared to meet. I had assured myself that Madame de Beaumont's letter was exaggerated, and now it seemed not to have conveyed to me half vividly enough the actual state of the unfortunate circumstances.
We had some slight refreshment served on the little table before us, but neither of us could partake of it heartily. I swallowed some mouthfuls of food more out of duty than anything else, and indulged myself with a cup of strong tea, my favorite beverage, after which we repaired quietly to the sick-room to have a look at Hortense before retiring.
Faint glimmers of light, leaping from the night lamp that burned dimly on a table by the bedside, danced in flickering shadows every now and then upon her pallid cheeks, but still she slept quietly and peacefully. One would think it was the sleep that knows no earthly waking were it not for the warm look of her paleness, and the feeble throbbing of something in her thin white neck.