Led Astray and The Sphinx Part 21

"He is not the only one," said Lucan, with ironical coldness.

She laughed a short and constrained laugh; then, after another pause, and while continuing to walk with downcast eyes:

"You must certainly hate me a little less now; say, don't you?"

"A little less."

"Be serious, will you? I know that I have made you suffer a great deal.

Are you beginning to forgive me now?"

Her voice had a.s.sumed an accent of tenderness quite unusual to it, and which touched Monsieur de Lucan.

"I forgive you with all my heart, my child," he replied.

She stopped, and grasping his two hands:

"True? We will not hate each other any more?" she said, in a low and apparently timid tone. "You love me a little?"

"Thank you," said Lucan, with grave emotion; "thank you; I love you very much."

As she was drawing him gently toward her he clasped her in a frank and affectionate embrace, and pressed his lips upon the forehead she was holding up to him; but at the same instant he felt her supple figure stiffen; her head rolled back; then she sank bodily, and slipped in his arms like a flower whose stem has suddenly been mowed down.

There was a bench within two steps; he carried her there, but after laying her upon it, instead of affording her the required a.s.sistance, he remained in an att.i.tude of strange immobility before that lovely and helpless form.

A long silence followed, broken only by the gentle and monotonous ripple of the brook. Shaking off his stupor at last, Monsieur de Lucan called out several times in a loud and almost harsh voice:

"Julia! Julia!"

As she remained motionless still, he ran down into the ravine, took some water in the hollow of his hand, and bathed her temples with it. In the course of a minute or two, he saw her eyes opening in the darkness, and he helped her raise her head.

"What is it?" she said, looking at him with a wild expression; "what has happened, sir?"

"Why, you fainted," said Lucan, laughing.

"Fainted?" repeated Julia.

"Of course; that's just what I feared; you must have been benumbed by the cold. Can you walk? Come, try."

"Perfectly well," she said, rising and taking his arm.

Like all those who experience sudden prostration, Julia remembered, but in a very indistinct manner, the circ.u.mstance that had brought about her fainting.

In the meantime they had resumed their walk slowly in the direction of the chateau.

"Fainted!" she repeated, gayly; "mon Dieu! how perfectly ridiculous!"

Then, with sudden animation:

"But what did I say? Did I speak at all?"

"You said, 'I am cold!' and away you went!"

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Did you think I was dead?"

"I did hope for a moment that you were," said Lucan, coldly.

"How horrid of you! But we were talking before that. What were we saying?"

"We were making a pact of amity and friends.h.i.+p."

"Well! it doesn't look much like it now, Monsieur de Lucan!"

"Madam?"

"You seem positively angry with me because I fainted."

"Of course I am. In the first place, I don't like that sort of adventures, and then, it is wholly your own fault; you are so imprudent, so unreasonable!"

"Oh! mon Dieu! Don't you want a switch?"

And as the lights of the chateau were coming into sight:

"_Apropos_, don't trouble mother with any of that nonsense, will you?"

"Certainly not; you may rest easy on that score."

"You are just as cross as you can be, you know?"

"Probably I am; but I have just spent there a few minutes so very painful."

"I pity you with all my heart," said Julia, dryly.

She threw off her vail in the vestibule, and returned to the parlor.

The Baroness de Pers, who was to leave early the next day, had already retired. Julia performed some four-handed pieces on the piano with her mother. Monsieur de Lucan took the place of the "dummy" at the whist table, and the evening ended quietly.

CHAPTER VII.

VICTORY AND DEFEAT.

The next morning, Clotilde was preparing to accompany her mother to the station in the carriage; Monsieur de Lucan, detained at the chateau by a business appointment, was present to take leave of his mother-in-law. He remarked the thoughtful countenance of the baroness; she was silent, much against her habit, and she cast embarra.s.sed looks upon him; she approached him several times with a constrained smile and confidential manner, but confined herself to addressing to him a few commonplace words. Availing herself at last of a moment when Clotilde was giving some orders, she leaned out of the carriage-window, and, pressing significantly Monsieur de Lucan's hand: