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Next instant the four had made a noiseless exit into the hall and were grouped before the door of the next room. Very cautiously, Adrienne's small fingers sought the door knob and turned it. Slowly, soundlessly, she opened the door and stepped cat-footed into the room. A little line of three, emulating her stealthy movement, tip-toed after her into a room empty of occupants.
A man on horseback, dressed with elegant simplicity, keeping at the other side of the avenue, contemplated with proud satisfaction this equipage which he had, as it were, created. It was M. de Bonneville Adrienne's equerry, as M. de Montbron called him for the carriage belonged to that young lady. A change had taken place in the plan for this magic day's amusement.
And now Adrienne's anger, the grief that she had trampled under for some hours, increased from moment to moment, heightened and stung by the sight of this creature, by all kinds of bitter thoughts and by visions of treason and baffled love.
He drank a few drops of the liquor it contained, and replaced it on a little ivory table close to Adrienne's bed. "This liquor is sharp and hot," said he. "Now I am certain to die. Oh! that I may still have time to feast on the sight and perfume of this chamber to lay my dying head on the couch where she has reposed."
These thoughts excited in the workgirl's mind no bitter or ungrateful feeling towards her benefactress; but the heart of the unfortunate girl was so delicately susceptible on the subject of her fatal passion, that, in spite of her deep and tender affection for Mdlle. de Cardoville, she suffered cruelly at the thought of Adrienne's being mistress of her secret.
Ah! that look of sorrowful anger would have penetrated like a red-hot iron into Adrienne's soul. That glance that Guy caught a glimpse of told eloquently of wounded love and bruised vanity on the part of that man who, placed here between these two women, his mistress and the other, suffered less from the sorrow caused to Adrienne than from Marianne's treason in deserting him for this Spaniard.
There was a mystery in the transaction, which Adrienne sought in vain to penetrate. These trying doubts, this cruel curiosity, only served to nourish Adrienne's fatal love; and we may imagine her incurable despair, when she found that the indifference, or even disdain of Djalma, was unable to stifle a passion that now burned more fiercely than ever.
"We try to be like you, ma chere," was Adrienne's graceful response. "That's very pretty, Imp," acknowledged Dorothy, flushing. "I'll have to watch my step to merit that compliment. Now that you've heard the sad story of the poverty-stricken senior, I call for a change of subject. Did you know that Edith Hammond isn't coming back?" "She isn't!"
When Adrienne's head did not reappear, his alarm grew, and he plunged under water where the shadow of the overturned boat made everything cloudy and obscure to his wide- open eyes. He stroked his way back and forth through the purple fog that he found down there, until his lungs seemed on the point of bursting.
Half an hour after this conversation, Adrienne's carriage stopped, as we have before seen, at the little garden-gate of the house in the Rue Blanche. Florine entered the greenhouse and soon returned to her mistress. "The shade is down, madame. M. Rodin has just entered the prince's room."
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