The Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte M. Yonge (i am reading a book .txt) 📕

‘Frightful! What, with the grave blue eyes that seem like the steady avenging judgment of St. Michael in his triumph in the picture at the Louvre?’ murmured Madame de Selinville; then she added quickly, ‘Yes, yes, it is well. She and you, Veronique, may see him frightful and welcome. There are other eyes—make haste, girl. There—another handerchief. Follow me not.’

And Madame de Selinville moved out of the room, past the great state bedroom and the salle beyond, to another chamber where more servants waited and rose at her entrance.

‘Is any one with my father?’

‘No, Madame;’ and a page knocking, opened the door and announced, ‘Madame la Comtesse.’

The Chevalier, in easy deshabille, with a flask of good wine, iced water, and delicate cakes and confitures before him, a witty and licentious epigrammatic poem close under his hand, sat lazily enjoying the luxuries that it had been his daughter’s satisfaction to procure for him ever since her marriage. He sprang up to meet her with a grace and deference that showed how different a person was the Comtesse de Selinville from Diane de Ribaumont.

‘Ah! ma belle, my sweet,’ as there was a mutual kissing of hands, ‘thou art returned. Had I known thine hour, I had gone down for thy first embrace. But thou lookest fair, my child; the convent has made thee lovelier than ever.’

‘Father, who think you is here? It is he—the Baron.’

‘The Baron? Eh, father!’ she cried impetuously. ‘Who could it be but one?’

‘My child, you are mistaken! That young hot-head can never be thrusting himself here again.’

‘But he is, father; I brought him into Paris in my coach! I left him at the Ambassador’s.’

‘Thou shouldest have brought him here. There will be ten thousand fresh imbroglios.’

‘I could not; he is as immovable as ever, though unable to speak! Oh, father, he is very ill, he suffers terribly. Oh, Narcisse! Ah! may I never see him again!’

‘But what brings him blundering her again?’ exclaimed the Chevalier. ‘Speak intelligibly, child! I thought we had guarded against that! He knows nothing of the survivance.’

‘I cannot tell much. He could not open his mouth, and his half-brother, a big dull English boy, stammered out a few words of shocking French against his will. But I believe they had heard of la pauvre petite at La Sablerie, came over for her, and finding the ruin my brother makes wherever he goes, are returning seeking intelligence and succour for HIM.’

‘That may be,’ said the Chevalier, thoughtfully. ‘It is well thy brother is in Poland. I would not see him suffer any more; and we may get him back to England ere my son learns that he is here.’

‘Father, there is a better way! Give him my hand.’

‘Eh quoi, child; if thou art tired of devotion, there are a thousand better marriages.’

‘No, father, none so good for this family. See, I bring him all—all that I was sold for. As the price of that, he resigns for ever all his claims to the ancestral castle—to La Leurre, and above all, that claim to Nid de Merle as Eustacie’s widower, which, should he ever discover the original contract, will lead to endless warfare.’

‘His marriage with Eustacie was annulled. Yet—yet there might be doubts. There was the protest; and who knows whether they formally renewed their vows when so much went wrong at Montpipeau. Child, it is a horrible perplexity. I often could wish we had had no warning, and the poor things had made off together. We could have cried shame till we forced out a provision for thy brother; and my poor little Eustacie—-’ He had tears in his eyes as he broke off.

Diane made an impatient gesture. ‘She would have died of tedium in England, or broken forth so as to have a true scandal. That is all over, father, now; weigh my proposal! Nothing else will save my brother from all that his cruel hand merits! You will win infinite credit at court. The King loved him more than you thought safe.’

‘The King has not a year to live, child, and he has personally offended the King of Poland. Besides, this youth is heretic.’

‘Only by education. Have I not heard you say that he had by an abjuration. And as to Monsieur’s enmity, if it be not forgotten, the glory of bringing about a conversion would end that at once.’

‘Then, daughter, thou shouldst not have let him bury himself among the English.’

‘It was unavoidable, father, and perhaps if he were here he would live in an untamable state of distrust, whereas we may now win him gradually. You will go and see him to-morrow, my dear father.’

‘I must have time to think of this thy sudden device.’

‘Nay, he is in no condition to hear of it at present. I did but speak now, that you might not regard it as sudden when the fit moment comes. It is the fixed purpose of my mind. I am no girl now, and I could act for myself if I would; but as it is for your interest and that of my brother thus to dispose of me, it is better that you should act for me.’

‘Child, headstrong child, thou wilt make no scandal,’ said the Chevalier, looking up at his daughter’s handsome head drawn up proudly with determination.

‘Certainly not, sir, if you will act for me.’ And Diane sailed away in her sweeping folds of black brocade.

In a few moments more she was kneeling with hands locked together before a much-gilded little waxem figure of St. Eustacie with his cross-bearing stag by his side, which stood in a curtained recess in the alcove where her stately bed was placed.

‘Monseigneur St. Eustache, ten wax candles everyday to your shrine at Bellaise, so he recovers; ten more if he listen favourably and loves me. Nay, all—all the Selinville jewels to make you a shrine. All—all, so he will only let me love him;’ and then, while taking up the beads, and pronouncing the repeated devotions attached to each, her mind darted back to the day when, as young children, she had played unfairly, defrauded Landry Osbert, and denied it; how Berenger, though himself uninjured, had refused to speak to her all that day—how she had hated him then—how she had thought she had hated him throughout their brief intercourse in the previous year; how she had played into her brother’s hands; and when she thought to triumph over the man who had scorned her, found her soul all blank desolation, and light gone out from the earth! Reckless and weary, she had let herself be united to M. de Selinville, and in her bridal honours and amusements had tried to crowd out the sense of dreariness and lose herself in excitement. Then came the illness and death of her husband, and almost at the same time the knowledge of Berenger’s existence. She sought excitement again that feverish form of devotion then in vogue