And milady went to bed, and fell asleep with a smile on her lips. Any one who had seen her sleeping might have said she was a young girl dreaming of the crown of flowers she was to wear on her brow at the next fête.
Milady dreamed that she at length had D’Artagnan in her power, that she was present at his execution; the sight of his odious blood, flowing beneath the executioner’s axe, spread that charming smile upon her lips.
She slept as a prisoner sleeps who is rocked by his first hope.
In the morning when they entered her chamber she was still in bed. Felton remained in the corridor. He brought with him the woman of whom he had spoken the evening before, and who had just arrived; this woman entered, and approaching milady’s bed, offered her services.
Milady was habitually pale. Her complexion might therefore deceive a person who saw her for the first time.
“I am in a fever,” said she; “I have not slept a single instant during all this long night; I am in frightful pain. Will you be more humane to me than others were to me yesterday? Besides, all I ask is permission to stay in bed.”
“Would you like a physician sent for?” asked the woman.
Felton listened to this dialogue without speaking a word.
Milady reflected that the more people she had around her, the more she should have to work upon, and the stricter would be the watch Lord Winter kept over her. Besides, the physician might declare the malady was feigned; and milady, having lost the first game, was not willing to lose the second.
“Send for a physician!” said she. “What would be the good of that? These gentlemen declared yesterday that my illness was a comedy; it would be just the same to-day, no doubt, for since yesterday evening they have had plenty of time to send for a doctor.”
“Then,” said Felton, becoming impatient, “say yourself, madame, what treatment you wish followed.”
“Eh! how can I tell? My God! I know that I am in pain, that’s all. Give me anything you like; it is of very little consequence to me.”
“Go, get Lord Winter,” said Felton, tired of these eternal complaints.
“Oh no, no!” cried milady; “no sir, do not call him, I conjure you. I am well, I want nothing; do not call him.”
She put such prodigious vehemence, such irresistible eloquence, into this exclamation that Felton, in spite of himself, advanced some steps into the room.
“He has come!” thought milady.
“Now, if you are really in pain,” said Felton, “a physician shall be sent for; and if you deceive us—well, why, it will be so much the worse for you. But at least we shall not have to reproach ourselves with anything.”
Milady made no reply, but turning her beautiful head over on her pillow, she burst into tears, and sobbed as though her heart would break.
Felton surveyed her for an instant with his usual coolness; then, seeing that the crisis threatened to be prolonged, he left the room. The woman followed him, and Lord Winter did not appear.
“I fancy to begin to see my way,” murmured milady, with a savage joy, burying herself under the clothes to conceal from anybody who might be watching her this burst of inward satisfaction.
Two hours passed away.
“Now it is time that the malady should be over,” said she; “let me get up and obtain some success this very day. I have but ten days, and this evening two will be gone.”
On entering milady’s room in the morning they had brought her breakfast; now she thought it could not be long before they would come to clear the table, and that she should see Felton.
Milady was not mistaken. Felton reappeared again, and without observing whether she had or had not touched her repast, he made a sign for the table to be carried out of the room, as it was brought in all set.
Felton remained behind; he held a book in his hand.
Milady, reclining in an armchair near the fireplace, beautiful, pale, and resigned, looked like a holy virgin awaiting martyrdom.
Felton approached her, and said,
“Lord Winter, who is a Catholic, as well as yourself, madame, thinking that the privation of the rites and ceremonies of your church might be painful to you, has consented that you should read every day the ordinary of your mass, and here is a book which contains the ritual of it.”
At the manner in which Felton laid the book on the little table near which milady was sitting, at the tone in which he pronounced the two words “your mass,” at the disdainful smile with which he accompanied them, milady raised her head and looked more attentively at the officer.
Then, by the plain arrangement of his hair, by his costume of exaggerated simplicity, by his brow polished like marble, but hard and impenetrable like it, she recognized one of those gloomy Puritans she had so often met with, both at the court of King James and at the court of the king of France, where, in spite of the remembrance of St. Bartholomew’s, they sometimes came to seek refuge.
She then had one of those sudden inspirations which only people of genius have in great crises, in the supreme moments which are to decide their fortunes or their lives.
Those two words, “your mass,” and a simple glance cast on Felton, revealed to her all the importance of the reply she was about to make.
But with that rapidity of intelligence which was peculiar to her, this reply, ready arranged, presented itself to her lips,
“I,” said she, with an accent of disdain struck in unison with that which she had remarked in the young officer’s voice—“I, sir? My mass? Lord Winter, the corrupted Catholic, knows very well that I am not of his religion, and this is a snare he wishes to set for me!”
“And of what religion are you, then, madame?” asked Felton.
“I will tell,” cried milady, with a feigned enthusiasm, “on the day when I shall have suffered sufficiently for my faith.”
Felton’s look revealed to milady the full extent of the space she had just opened for herself by this single word.
The young officer, however, remained mute and motionless. His look alone had spoken.
“I am in the hands of mine enemies,” continued she, with that tone of enthusiasm which she knew was familiar to the Puritans. “Well let my God save me, or let me perish for my God! That is the reply I beg you to make to Lord Winter. And as to this book,” added she, pointing to the ritual with her finger, but without touching it, as though she would be contaminated by the touch, “you may carry it back and make use of it yourself; for doubtless you are doubly Lord Winter’s accomplice—the accomplice in his persecutions the accomplice in his heresies.”
Felton made no reply, took the book with the same appearance of repugnance which he had before manifested, and retired thoughtfully.
Then she threw herself upon her knees and began to pray.
“My God, my God!” said she, “Thou knowest in what holy cause I suffer; give me, then, the strength to suffer.”
The door opened gently; the beautiful suppliant pretended not to hear the noise, and in a voice broken by tears she continued,
“God of vengeance! God of goodness! wilt Thou allow this man’s frightful projects to be accomplished?”
Then only did she feign to hear the sound of Felton’s steps; and rising projects as thought, she blushed, as if ashamed of being surprised on her knees.
“I do not like to disturb those who pray, madame,” said Felton seriously; “do not disturb yourself on my account, I beseech you.”
“How do you know I was praying, sir?” said milady, in a voice choked by sobs. “You were mistaken, sir; I was not praying.”
“Do you think, then, madame,” replied Felton, in the same serious voice, but in a milder tone—“do you think I assume the right of preventing a creature from prostrating herself before her Creator? God forbid! Besides, repentance is becoming to the guilty. Whatever crimes they may have committed, for me the guilty are sacred at the feet of God.”
“Guilty!—I?” said milady, with a smile which might have disarmed the angel of the last judgment. “Guilty! Oh, my God, Thou knowest whether I am guilty! Say I am condemned, sir, if you please; but you know that God, who loves martyrs, sometimes permits the innocent to be condemned.”
“Were you condemned, were you innocent, were you a martyr,” replied Felton, “the greater would be the need of prayer; and I myself will aid you with my prayers.”
“Oh, you are just a man!” cried milady, throwing herself on her knees at his feet. “I can stand it no longer, for I fear I shall be wanting in strength in the moment at which I shall be forced to undergo the struggle and confess my faith. Listen, then, to the supplication of a despairing woman. You are made a tool of, sir; but that is not the question. I ask you only one favour, and if you grant it me, I will bless you in this world and in the world to come.”
“Speak to the master, madame,” said Felton; “happily I am not charged with the power either of pardoning or punishing. God has laid this responsibility on one higher placed than I am.”
“To you—no, to you alone! Listen to me rather than contribute to my destruction, rather than contribute to my ignominy.”
“If you have deserved this shame, madame, if you have incurred this ignominy, you must submit to it as an offering to God.”
“What do you say? Oh, you do not understand me! When I speak of ignominy, you think I speak of some punishment or other, of imprisonment or death! Would to Heaven it were no worse! Of what consequence to me is imprisonment or death?”
“I no longer understand you, madame,” said Felton.
“Or, rather, you pretend not to understand me, sir!” replied the prisoner, with a doubting smile.
“No, madame, on the honour of a soldier, on the faith of a Christian.”
“What! You are ignorant of Lord Winter’s designs on me?”
“I am.”
“Impossible! You are his confidant!”
“I never lie, madame.” “Oh, he makes too little concealment of them for you not to guess them.”
“I seek to guess nothing, madame; I wait till I am confided in; and apart from what Lord Winter has said to me before you, he has confided nothing to me.”
“why, then,” cried milady, with an incredible accent of truthfulness —‘why, then, you are not his accomplice; you do not know that he destines me to a disgrace which all the punishments of the world cannot equal in horror?”
“You are mistaken, madame,” said Felton, reddening; “Lord Winter is not capable of such a crime.”
“Good!” said milady to herself; “without knowing what it is, he calls it a crime!”
Then aloud,
“The friend of the infamous is capable of everything.”
“Whom do you call the infamous?” asked Felton.
“Are there, then, in England two men to whom such an epithet can be applied?”
“You mean George Villiers?” said Felton, and his eyes flashed fire.
“Whom pagans and infidel gentiles call the Duke of Buckingham,” replied milady. “I could not have thought that there was an Englishman in all England who would have required so long an explanation to understand of whom I was speaking.”
“The hand of the Lord is stretched over him,” said Felton; “he will not escape the chastisement he deserves.”
Felton only expressed regarding the duke the execration which all the English felt for a man who the Catholics themselves called the extortioner, the pillager, the profligate, and whom the Puritans styled simply Satan.
“Oh, my God, my God!” cried milady; “when I supplicate Thee to pour on this man the chastisement which is his due, Thou knowest that I pursue not my own vengeance, but that I pray for the deliverance of a whole nation!”
“Do you know him, then?” asked Felton.
“At length he questions me!” said milady to herself, at the height of joy at having obtained so quickly such a great result. “Oh, do I know him? Yes; to my misfortune, to my eternal misfortune!”
And milady wrung her hands, as if she had reached the very paroxysm of grief.
Felton no doubt felt within himself that his strength was deserting him, and he took several steps toward the door; but the prisoner, whose eye was never off him, sprang after him and stopped him.
“Sir,” cried she, “be kind, be clement, listen to my prayer. That knife, which the baron’s fatal prudence deprived me of, because he knows the use I would make of it—Oh, hear me to the end! That knife—give it to me for a minute only, for mercy’s, for pity’s sake! I will embrace your knees! You shall shut the door, that you may be certain I am not angry with you! My God! the idea of being angry with you, the only just, good, and compassionate being I have met with!—you, my saviour perhaps! One minute, that knife, one minute, a single minute, and I will restore it to you through the grating of the door; only one minute, Mr. Felton, and you will have saved my honour.”
“To kill yourself?” cried Felton, in terror, forgetting to withdraw his hands from the hands of the prisoner—“to kill yourself?”
“I have said, sir,” murmured milady, lowering her voice, and allowing herself to sink overpowered to the ground—“I have told my secret! He knows all—My God, I am lost!”
Felton remained standing, motionless and undecided.
“He still doubts,” thought milady; “I have not been sufficiently genuine.”
Some one was heard walking in the corridor. Milady recognized Lord Winter’s step.
Felton recognized it also, and took a step toward the door.
Milady sprang forward.
“Oh, not a word,” said she, in a concentrated voice—“not a word to this man of all I have said to you, or I am lost, and it would be you— you—”
Then as the steps drew near she became silent for fear of being heard, applying, with a gesture of infinite terror, her beautiful hand to Felton’s mouth.
Felton gently pushed milady from him, and she sank into an easychair.
Lord Winter passed before the door without stopping, and they heard the sound of his footsteps in the distance.
Felton, as pale as death, remained some instants with his ear alert and listening; then, when the sound had entirely died away, he breathed like a man awaking from a dream, and rushed out of the apartment.
“Ah,” said milady, listening in her turn to the noise of Felton’s steps, which faded away in a direction opposite to Lord Winter’s—“ah, at length thou art mine!”
The next day, when Felton entered milady’s apartment he found her standing upon a chair, holding in her hands a cord made of several cambric handkerchiefs torn into strips, twisted together into a kind of rope, and tied at the ends. At the noise Felton made in opening the door milady leaped lightly to the ground and tried to hide behind her the improvised cord she held in her hand.
The young man was even paler than usual, and his eyes, inflamed by lack of sleep, showed that he had passed a feverish night.
Nevertheless, his brow was armed with a sternness more severe than ever.
He advanced slowly toward milady, who had sat down, and taking one end of the murderous rope, which, by mistake or perhaps by design, she allowed to appear,
“What is this, madame?” he asked coldly.
