“Since then,” said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same look in her face, “I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes. In the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of him to that man?”
“Information!” repeated Harriet.
“What if I had found out one who knew your brother’s secret; who knew the manner of his flight, who knew where he and the companion of his flight were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word by word, before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at the time, looking into this enemy’s face, and seeing it change till it was scarcely human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit? What if I knew, now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and must, in so many hours, come up with him?”
“Remove your hand!” said Harriet, recoiling. “Go away! Your touch is dreadful to me!”
“I have done this,” pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless of the interruption. “Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you believe what I am saying?”
“I fear I must. Let my arm go!”
“Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?”
“Dreadful!” said Harriet.
“Then when you see me now,” said Alice hoarsely, “here again, kneeling quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn’t have them come together while his pursuer is so blind and headlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would know the danger better.”
“How can it be prevented? What can I do?” cried Harriet.
“All night long,” pursued the other, hurriedly, “I had dreams of him—and yet I didn’t sleep—in his blood. All day, I have had him near me.”
“What can I do?” cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.
“If there is anyone who’ll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?”
“Yes.”
“Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he doesn’t know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is on the road—I know he is!—and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while there is time—if there is time—and not to meet him yet. A month or so will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head without.”
The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face, and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet’s arm; and the place where she had been was empty.
LIV
The Fugitives
The time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment, comprising some half-dozen rooms;—a dull cold hall or corridor, a dining-room, a drawing-room, a bedchamber, and an inner drawing-room, or boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means of communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row of windows upon one side of the square courtyard in the centre, upon which the whole four sides of the mansion looked.
An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a show of state, reigned in these rooms. The walls and ceilings were gilded and painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hung in festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled and intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from the panels of the wall. But in the daytime, when the lattice-blinds (now closely shut) were opened, and the light let in, traces were discernible among this finery, of wear and tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and lengthened intervals of want of use and habitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life, and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters of burning candles, could not wholly efface them, though the general glitter threw them in the shade.
The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses, scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one room—that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from the hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective of open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart of its radiance sat a beautiful woman—Edith.
She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous, but
