The Champdoce Mystery by Emile Gaboriau (crime books to read TXT) 📕

She had drawn out a slender hand from the mass of furs in which she was enveloped, and extended it to him, as she replied in a tone which had a ring of tenderness beneath its commonplace tone,—

“Yes, we are established here, and I hope that we shall be as good friends as we were once before. Farewell, until we meet again.”

As if her words had been a signal, the coachman struck his horses lightly with his whip, and the magnificent equipage rolled swiftly away. Norbert had not accepted Diana’s proffered hand, but presently he realized the whole scene, and plunging his spurs into his horse dashed furiously up the Avenue in the direction of the Arc de Triomphe.

“Ah!” said he, as a bitter pang of despair shot through his heart, “I still love her, and can never care for any one else; but I will see her again. She has not forgotten me. I could read it in her eyes, and detect it all in the tones of her voice.” Here a momentary gleam of reason crossed his brain. “But will a woman like Diana ever forgive an offence like mine? and when she seems most friendly the danger is the more near.”

Unfortunately he thrust aside this idea, and refused to listen to the voice of reason. That evening he went down to his club with the intention of asking a few questions regarding the Mussidans. He heard enough to satisfy himself, and the next day he met Madame de Mussidan in the Champs Elysees, and for many days afterwards in rapid succession. Each day they exchanged a few words, and at last Diana, with much simulated hesitation, promised to alight from her carriage when next they met in the Bois, and talk to Norbert unhampered by the presence of the domestics.

Madame de Mussidan had made the appointment for three o’clock, but before two Norbert was on the spot, in a fever of expectation and doubt.

“Is it I,” asked he of himself, “waiting once more for Diana, as I have so often waited for her at Bevron?”

Ah, how many changes had taken place since then! He was now no longer waiting for Diana de Laurebourg, but for the Countess de Mussidan, another man’s wife, while he also was a married man. It was no longer the whim of a monomaniac that kept them apart, but the dictates of law, honor, and the world.

“Why,” said he, in a mad burst of passion, “why should we not set at defiance all the cold social rules framed by an artificial state of society; why should not the woman leave her husband and the man his wife?” Norbert had consulted his watch times without number before the appointed hour came. “Ah,” sighed he, “suppose that she should not come after all.”

As he said these words a cab stopped, and the Countess de Mussidan alighted from it. She came rapidly along towards him, crossing an open space without heeding the irregularities of the ground, as that diminished the distance which separated her from Norbert. He advanced to meet her, and taking his arm, they plunged into the recesses of the Bois. There had been heavy rain on the day previous, and the pathway was wet and muddy, but Madame de Mussidan did not seem to notice this.

“Let us go on,” said she, “until we are certain of not being seen from the road. I have taken every precaution. My carriage and servants are waiting for me in front of St. Philippe du Roule; but for all that I may have been watched.”

“You were not so timid in bygone days.”

“Then I was my own mistress; and if I lost my reputation, the loss affected me only; but on my wedding day I had a sacred trust confided to me—the honor of the man who has given me his name, and that I must guard with jealous care.”

“Then you love me no longer.”

She stopped suddenly, and overwhelming Norbert with one of those glacial glances which she knew so well how to assume, answered in measured accents,—

“Your memory fails you; all that has remained to me of the past is the rejection of a proposal conveyed in a certain letter that I wrote.”

Norbert interrupted her by a piteous gesture of entreaty.

“Mercy!” said he. “You would pardon me if you knew all the horrors of the punishment that I am enduring. I was mad, blind, besotted, nor did I love you as I do at this moment.”

A smile played round Diana’s beautiful mouth, for Norbert had told her nothing that she did not know before, but she wished to hear it from his own lips.

“Alas!” murmured she; “I can only frame my reply with the fatal words, ‘Too late!’”

“Diana!”

He endeavored to seize her hand, but she drew it away with a rapid movement.

“Do not use that name,” said she; “you have no right to do so. Is it not sufficient to have blighted the young girl’s life? and yet you seek to compromise the honor of the wife. You must forget me; do you understand? It is to tell you this that I am here. The other day, when I saw you again, I lost my self-command. My heart leapt up at the sight of you, and, fool that I was, I permitted you to see this; but base no hopes on my weakness. I said to you, Let us be friends. It was a mere act of madness. We can never be friends, and had better, therefore, treat each other as strangers. Do you forget that lying tongues at Bevron accused me of being your mistress? Do you think that this falsehood has not reached my husband’s ears? One day, when your name was mentioned in his presence, I saw a gleam of hatred and jealousy in his eye. Great heavens! should he, on my return, suspect that my hand had rested in yours, he would expel me from his house like some guilty wretch! The door of our house must remain for ever closed to you. I am miserable indeed. Be a man; and if your heart still holds one atom of the love you once bore for me, prove it by never seeking me again.”

As she concluded she hurried away, leaving in Norbert’s heart a more deadly poison than the one she had endeavored to persuade the son to administer to his father, the Duke de Champdoce. She knew each chord that vibrated in his heart, and could play on it at will. She felt sure that in a month he would again be her slave, and that she could exercise over him a sway more despotic than she had yet done, and, in addition to this, that he would assist her in executing a cruel scheme of revenge, which she had long been plotting.

After having followed Diana about like her very shadow for several days, Norbert at last ventured to approach her in the Champs Elysees. She was angry, but not to such an extent that he feared to repeat his offence. Then she wept, but her tears could not force him to avoid her. At first her system of defence was very strong, then it gradually grew weaker. She granted him another interview, and then two others followed. But what were these meetings worth to him? They took place in a church or a public gallery, in places where they could