fleshless face was dry and sallow and the thick, grizzled hair seemed too heavy for the little head that carried it, but the eyes, an innocent baby blue, were so round with terror as to relieve Marianne instantly of any fears she might have felt. The mysterious wanderer looked exactly like a frightened hen. Calmly, although still without lowering her weapon, Marianne walked towards her, but to her surprise the other woman backed away fearfully holding out trembling hands as though to ward off some nightmarish vision.
'Pierre!' she muttered in a shaky voice. 'Pierre, oh my God!'
'Are you unwell?' Marianne enquired pleasantly. 'And do please put down that candle before you set the house on fire.'
The woman seemed completely overcome. Still staring at Marianne with eyes almost starting out of her head, she reached out a trembling hand and let the candlestick down on the table with a clatter. Her teeth seemed to be actually chattering, and it occurred to Marianne that her behaviour was extremely odd coming from one who had appeared to harbour such violent intentions. She regarded the stranger in some perplexity convinced that she must be dealing with a mad woman.
'Will you be good enough to tell me who you are and why you are trying to set this house on fire?'
Instead of answering, the woman asked a question of her own, but in a voice that trembled so much as to be scarcely audible.
'For – for the love of heaven! Who are you?'
'The owner of this house—'
The stranger shrugged, her eyes still fixed on Marianne's face.
'You cannot be. Your name?'
'Don't you think it is rather for me to ask the questions? But I will tell you. I am called Maria Stella. I am a singer and in a few day's time I shall appear at the Opera. Does that satisfy you? No. Don't move—'
But ignoring the pistol still trained on her, the strange woman closed her eyes and passed a trembling hand across her brow.
'I must be mad!' she murmured. 'I must have been dreaming! I thought – but it is only some opera singer.'
The inexpressible contempt in her voice aroused Marianne's anger afresh.
'You are insufferable! For the last time, I ask you to tell me who you are and what you are doing here. There are no more portraits to steal.'
The stranger's thin lips, so pale and narrow as to be almost nonexistent, curved in a disdainful smile.
'How did you know it was I?'
'It could be no-one else! Where have you put it?'
'It is no concern of yours. That portrait belongs to me. It is a family heirloom.'
'Family?' Now it was Marianne's turn to be surprised. 'What family?'
'My own, of course! I fail to see how it can interest an Italian singer, but this house belonged to my family. I say 'belongs' because you may not keep it long. It is said that Napoleon means to honour his forthcoming marriage to the niece of Marie-Antoinette by making the purchasers of emigre property disgorge it again.'
'No doubt that is why you wished to set fire to this house?'
'I could not see the house in which the Asselnats had lived and suffered become the setting for an actress's wanton revels! As for my name—'
'I will tell it you,' Marianne interrupted her, realizing at last who stood before her. 'Your name is Adelaide d'Asselnat. And I will tell you something else as well. When I came in just now, you looked at me with a kind of terror because you were struck by a resemblance—'
'Perhaps, but that was an illusion—'
'Was it then? Look at me more closely!' Now it was Marianne's turn to seize the silver candlestick and hold it near her face. 'Look at my face, my mouth, my colouring! Go and find the picture you took away and put it beside me. You will see that I am indeed his daughter!'
'His daughter? But how—'
'His daughter, I tell you. The daughter of Pierre d'Asselnat, Marquis de Villeneuve and of Anne Selton! Maria Stella is not my real name, only a pseudonym. My name is Marianne Elizabeth d'As—'
She had no time to say more. Mademoiselle d'Asselnat must have had more than her share of excitement for one day. With a little sigh she subsided on to the salon carpet in a dead faint.
Marianne succeeded, with something of an effort, in getting the little old spinster on to one of the sofa's standing near the fireplace. Next, she stirred up the fire as best she could, lit some more candles to give a better light, and then made her way down to the kitchen in the basement in search of something to revive her cousin. The evening's melancholy had flown away as though by a miracle, and, all things considered, the discovery of this remarkable Adelaide she had believed confined to the depths of Auvergne under the watchful eye of the imperial police, an eye which now seemed somewhat lacking in watchfulness, might well qualify as a miracle. She had earlier promised to plead her cousin's cause with the Emperor but, with the selfishness of all those in love, she had let it go out of her mind during the enchanted days at the Trianon. Yet now that this d'Asselnat had dropped from heaven like a dusty, grey spider, she was suddenly as happy as though she had been given a present.
As she moved about filling a tray at random with a bottle of wine, glasses, plates, a pate which she happened to come across in the larder and a big chunk of bread, she caught herself humming the tune from 'The Vestal' which she was studying at that moment. At the same time she was racking her brains to remember what the duc d'Avaray and then later on Fouche had said about her turbulent relative. 'An old mad creature,' the first had called her, 'the friend of Mirabeau and La Fayette', 'a somewhat undesirable relative for one in your situation,' the second had said. From all this and from her own observations, Marianne concluded that Adelaide was certainly no ordinary person and this pleased her.
Whatever the case, mad or not, dangerous or not, Marianne had firmly made up her mind to try and make friends with this one remaining member of her family. When she returned to the salon with her tray, she saw that the few hearty slaps she had administered to her before leaving had produced their effect. Adelaide's eyes were open and she was sitting upright on the sofa where Marianne had left her lying down, gazing about her with the bemused expression of one who had seen a ghost. She looked up suspiciously at the pale smiling figure coming towards her.
'Are you feeling better now, cousin?' Marianne asked, putting her tray down on a small table.
Mechanically, the little spinster pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes and stretched out her hand for the proffered glass of wine. She swallowed a full glass with an ease denoting a certain familiarity and then sighed deeply.
'Yes, I feel better now. And so you are his daughter? You are so like him, I should not even have to ask. Except for the eyes. Pierre's eyes were black, and yours—'
'I have my mother's eyes.'
Adelaide's thin face hardened with a look of anger.
'The Englishwoman's eyes! I know!'
'Did you – did you dislike my mother?'
'I hate the English. I never wished to know her. What need had he to seek a wife from among her hereditary enemies?'
'He loved her,' Marianne said gently. 'Does that not seem to you a sufficient reason?'
Adelaide did not answer, but her expression told Marianne much more than any words. She guessed the tragedy of the plain girl, secretly in love with her handsome cousin only to see him one day fall in love with a girl so exquisitely lovely that there was no longer any question of fighting. She understood why Adelaide d'Asselnat had begun to live somewhat apart from her family, why she had sought her friends among the intellectuals whose heads were full of great, revolutionary ideas. The brilliance of Versailles which had suited the young married couple so well must have been painful to this night bird who had sucked in the new ideas greedily as a thirsty traveller coming upon an unexpected spring of fresh water. But then—
'What did you do during the Terror?' Marianne asked suddenly, seized by a terrible suspicion. Surely this old maid's frustrated love would not have driven her to associate with those who had turned the ideal of a
