She entered without hesitation, knowing whither it led. It was damp and stifling. Her candle burned dimmer and dimmer in the impure air of the long shut-up passage. There were, however, no other obstacles in her way. The passage was unincumbered; but the low arch, scarcely over her own height, seemed to press down upon her as she passed along, as if to prevent her progress. The fearless, wicked heart bore her up,—nothing worse than herself could meet her; and she felt neither fear at what lay before her nor remorse at what was behind.
The distance to be traversed was not far, although it seemed to her impatience to be interminable. Mère Malheur, with her light heels, could once run through it in a minute, to a tryst in the old tower. La Corriveau was thrice that time in groping her way along it before she came to a heavy, iron-ribbed door set in a deep arch, which marked the end of the passage.
That black, forbidding door was the dividing of light from darkness, of good from evil, of innocence from guilt. On one side of it, in a chamber of light, sat a fair girl, confiding, generous, and deceived only through her excess of every virtue; on the other, wickedness, fell and artful, was approaching with stealthy footsteps through an unseen way, and stood with hand upraised to knock, but incapable of entering in unless that unsuspecting girl removed the bar.
As the hour of midnight approached, one sound after another died away in the Château. Caroline, who had sat counting the hours and watching the spectral moon as it flickered among the drifting clouds, withdrew from the window with a trembling step, like one going to her doom.
She descended to the secret chamber, where she had appointed to meet her strange visitor and hear from strange lips the story that would be told her.
She attired herself with care, as a woman will in every extremity of life. Her dark raven hair was simply arranged, and fell in thick masses over her neck and shoulders. She put on a robe of soft, snow-white texture, and by an impulse she yielded to, but could not explain, bound her waist with a black sash, like a strain of mourning in a song of innocence. She wore no ornaments save a ring, the love-gift of Bigot, which she never parted with, but wore with a morbid anticipation that its promises would one day be fulfilled. She clung to it as a talisman that would yet conjure away her sorrows; and it did! but alas! in a way little anticipated by the constant girl! A blast from hell was at hand to sweep away her young life, and with it all her earthly troubles.
She took up a guitar mechanically, as it were, and as her fingers wandered over the strings, a bar or two of the strain, sad as the sigh of a broken heart, suggested an old ditty she had loved formerly, when her heart was full of sunshine and happiness, when her fancy used to indulge in the luxury of melancholic musings, as every happy, sensitive, and imaginative girl will do as a counterpoise to her high-wrought feelings.
In a low voice, sweet and plaintive as the breathings of an Aeolian harp, Caroline sang her Minne-song:—
“'A linnet sat upon a thorn
At evening chime.
Its sweet refrain fell like the rain
Of summer-time.
Of summer-time when roses bloomed,
And bright above
A rainbow spanned my fairy-land
Of hope and love!
Of hope and love! O linnet, cease
Thy mocking theme!
I ne'er picked up the golden cup
In all my dream!
In all my dream I missed the prize
Should have been mine;
And dreams won't die! though fain would I,
And make no sign!'”
The lamps burned brightly, shedding a cheerful light upon the landscapes and figures woven into the tapestry behind which was concealed the black door that was to admit La Corriveau.