The Chaplet of Pearls, Charlotte M. Yonge [superbooks4u .TXT] 📗

companions of the latter, and after the night and day of murder now stood before his sister with scented hair and handkerchief—the last, laced, delicately held by a hand in an embroidered glove—emerald pendants in his ears, a moustache twisted into sharp points and turned up like an eternal sardonic smile, and he led a little white poodle by a rose-coloured ribbon.

‘Well, sister,’ he said, as he went, through the motions of kissing her hand, and she embraced her father; ‘so you don’t know how to deal with megrims and transports?’

‘Father,’ said Diane, not vouchsafing any attention, ‘unless you can send her some assurance of his life, I will not answer for the consequences.’

Narcisse laughed: ‘Take her this dog, with my compliments. That is the way to deal with such a child as that.’

‘You do not know what you say, brother,’ answered Diane with dignity. ‘It goes deeper than that.’

‘The deeper it goes, child,’ said the elder Chevalier, ‘the better it is that she should be undeceived as soon as possible. She will recover, and be amenable the sooner.’

‘Then he lives, father?’ exclaimed Diane. ‘He lives, though she is not to hear it—say——’

‘What know I?’ said the old man, evasively. ‘On a night of confusion many mischances are sure to occur! Lurking in the palace at the very moment when there was a search for the conspirators, it would have been a miracle had the poor young man escaped.’

Diane turned still whiter. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘that was why you made Monsieur put Eustacie into the ballet, that they might not go on Wednesday!’

‘It was well hinted by you, daughter. We could not have effectually stopped them on Wednesday without making a scandal.’

‘Once more,’ said Diane, gasping, though still resolute; ‘is not the story told by Eustacie’s woman false—that she saw him—pistolled—by you, brother?’

‘Peste!’ cried Narcisse. ‘Was the prying wench there? I thought the little one might be satisfied that he had neighbour’s fare. No matter; what is done for one’s beaux yeux is easily pardoned—and if not, why, I have her all the same!’

‘Nevertheless, daughter,’ said the Chevalier, gravely, ‘the woman must be silenced. Either she must be sent home, or taught so to swear to having been mistaken, that la petite may acquit your brother! But what now, my daughter?’

‘She is livid!’ exclaimed Narcisse, with his sneer. ‘What, sir, did not you know she was smitten with the peach on the top of a pole?’

‘Enough, brother,’ said Diane, recovering herself enough to speak hoarsely, but with hard dignity. ‘You have slain—you need not insult, one whom you have lost the power of understanding!’

‘Shallow schoolboys certainly form no part of my study, save to kick them down-stairs when they grow impudent,’ said Narcisse, coolly. ‘It is only women who think what is long must be grand.’

‘Come, children, no disputes,’ said the Chevalier. ‘Of course we regret that so fine a youth mixed himself up with the enemies of the kingdom, like the stork among the sparrows. Both Diane and I are sorry for the necessity; but remember, child, that when he was interfering between your brother and his just right of inheritance and destined wife, he could not but draw such a fate on himself. Now all is smooth, the estates will be united in their true head, and you—you too, my child, will be provided for as suits your name. All that is needed is to soothe the little one, so as to hinder her from making an outcry—and silence the maid; my child will do her best for her father’s sake, and that of her family.’

Diane was less demonstrative than most of her countrywomen. She had had time to recollect the uselessness of giving vent to her indignant anguish, and her brother’s derisive look held her back. The family tactics, from force of habit, recurred to her; she made no further objection to her father’s commands; but when her father and brother parted with her, she tottered into the now empty chapel, threw herself down, with her burning forehead on the stone step, and so lay for hours. It was not in prayer. It was because it was the only place where she could be alone. To her, heaven above and earth below seemed alike full of despair, darkness, and cruel habitations, and she lay like one sick with misery and repugnance to the life and world that lay before her—the hard world that had quenched that one fair light and mocked her pity. It was a misery of solitude, and yet no thought crossed her of going to weep and sympathize with the other sufferer. No; rivalry and jealousy came in there! Eustacie viewed herself as his wife, and the very thought that she had been deliberately preferred and had enjoyed her triumph hardened Diane’s heart against her. Nay, the open violence and abandonment of her grief seemed to the more restrained and concentrated nature of her elder a sign of shallowness and want of durability; and in a certain contemptuous envy at her professing a right to mourn, Diane never even reconsidered her own resolution to play out her father’s game, consign Eustacie to her husband’s murdered, and leave her to console herself with bridal splendours and a choice of admirers from all the court.

However, for the present Diane would rather stay away as much as possible from the sick-bed of the poor girl; and when an approaching step forced her to rouse herself and hurry away by the other door of the chapel, she did indeed mount to the ladies’ bed-chamber, but only to beckon Veronique out of hearing and ask for her mistress.

Just the same still, only sleeping to have feverish dreams of the revolving wheel or the demons grappling her husband, refusing all food but a little drink, and lying silent except for a few moans, heedless who spoke or looked at her.

Diane explained that in that case it was needless to come to her, but added, with the vraisemblance of falsehood in which she had graduated in Catherine’s school, ‘Veronique, as I told you, you were mistaken.’

‘Ah, Mademoiselle, if M. le Baron lives, she will be cured at once.’

‘Silly girl,’ said Diane, giving relief to her pent-up feeling by asperity of manner, ‘how could he live when you and your intrigues got him into the palace on such a night? Dead he is, OF COURSE; but it was your own treacherous, mischievous fancy that laid it on my brother. He was far away with M. de Guise at the attack on the Admiral. It was some of Monsieur’s grooms you saw. You remember she had brought him into a scrape with Monsieur, and it was sure to be remembered. And look you, if you repeat the other tale, and do not drive it out of her head, you need not look to be long with her—no, nor at home. My father will have no one there to cause a scandal by an evil tongue.’

That threat convinced Veronique that she had been right; but she, too, had learnt lessons at the Louvre, and she was too diplomatic not to ask pardon for her blunder, promise to contradict it when her mistress could listen, and express her satisfaction that it was not the Chevalier Narcisse—for such things were not pleasant, as she justly observed, in families.