“Are you ill?” asked her husband, coming into her room to fetch her for lunch.
“I cannot get over the tragedy which is being enacted at my sister’s,” she said, truthfully enough.
“She has fallen into bad hands; it’s a disgrace to the family to have a du Tillet in it, a worthless fellow like that. If your sister got into any trouble, she would find scant pity with him.”
“What woman could endure pity?” said the Countess, with an involuntary shudder. “Your ruthless harshness is the truest homage.”
“There speaks your noble heart!” said Félix, kissing his wife’s hand, quite touched by her fine scorn. “A woman who feels like that does not need guarding.”
“Guarding?” she answered; “that again is another disgrace which recoils on you.”
Félix smiled, but Marie blushed. When a woman has committed a secret fault, she cloaks herself in an exaggerated womanly pride, nor can we blame the fraud, which points to a reserve of dignity or even high-mindedness.
Marie wrote a line to Nathan, under the name of M. Quillet, to tell him that all was going well, and sent it by a commissionaire to the Mail Hotel. At the Opera in the evening the Countess reaped the benefit of her falsehoods, her husband finding it quite natural that she should leave her box to go and see her sister. Félix waited to give her his arm till du Tillet had left his wife alone. What were not Marie’s feelings as she crossed the passage, entered her sister’s box, and took her seat there, facing with calm and serene countenance the world of fashion, amazed to see the sisters together!
“Tell me,” she said.
The reply was written on Marie-Eugénie’s face, the radiance of which many people ascribed to gratified vanity.
“Yes, he will be saved, darling, but for three months only, during which time we will put our heads together and find some more substantial help. Mme. de Nucingen will take four bills, each for ten thousand francs, signed by anyone you like, so as not to compromise you. She has explained to me how they are to be made out; I don’t understand in the least, but M. Nathan will get them ready for you. Only it occurred to me that perhaps our old master, Schmucke, might be useful to us now; he would sign them. If, in addition to these four securities, you write a letter guaranteeing their payment to Mme. de Nucingen, she will hand you the money tomorrow. Do the whole thing yourself; don’t trust to anybody. Schmucke, you see, would, I think, make no difficulty if you asked him. To disarm suspicion, I said that you wanted to do a kindness to our old music-master, a German who was in trouble. In this way I was able to beg for the strictest secrecy.”
“You angel of cleverness! If only the Baronne de Nucingen does not talk till after she has given the money!” said the Countess, raising her eyes as though in prayer, regardless of her surroundings.
“Schmucke lives in the little Rue de Nevers, on the Quai Conti; don’t forget, and go yourself.”
“Thanks,” said the Countess, pressing her sister’s hand. “Ah! I would give ten years of my life—”
“From your old age—”
“To put an end to all these horrors,” said the Countess, with a smile at the interruption.
The crowd at this moment, spying the two sisters through their opera-glasses, might suppose them to be talking of trivialities, as they heard the ring of their frank laughter. But any one of those idlers, who frequent the Opera rather to study dress and faces than to enjoy themselves, would be able to detect the secret of the Countess in the wave of feeling which suddenly blotted all cheerfulness out of their fair faces. Raoul, who did not fear the bailiffs at night, appeared, pale and ashy, with anxious eye and gloomy brow, on the step of the staircase where he regularly took his stand. He looked for the Countess in her box and, finding it empty, buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows on the balustrade.
“Can she be here!” he thought.
“Look up, unhappy hero,” whispered Mme. du Tillet.
As for Marie, at all risks she fixed on him that steady magnetic gaze, in which the will flashes from the eye, as rays of light from the sun. Such a look, mesmerizers say, penetrates to the person on whom it is directed, and certainly Raoul seemed as though struck by a magic wand. Raising his head, his eyes met those of the sisters. With that charming feminine readiness which is never at fault, Mme. de Vandenesse seized a cross, sparkling on her neck, and directed his attention to it by a swift smile, full of meaning. The brilliance of the gem radiated even upon Raoul’s forehead, and he replied with a look of joy; he had understood.
“Is it nothing, then, Eugénie,” said the Countess, “thus to restore life to the dead?”
“You have a chance yet with the Royal Humane Society,” replied Eugénie, with a smile.
“How wretched and depressed he looked when he came, and how happy he will go away!”
At this moment du Tillet, coming up to Raoul with every mark of friendliness, pressed his hand, and said:
“Well, old fellow,
