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I saw Texel despatch a messenger to the lictors who stood on either side of Helene. The body-guard of the Duke stood closer about her as the Duke Otho himself stood up to read the sentence. I saw that the form of it had been written out upon a paper. Doubtless, therefore, all had been prearranged, so that neither evidence nor eloquence could possibly have had any effect upon it.
"Dear Helene," she said, "what is this terrible trouble that is preying upon your life? Every day you grow thinner and whiter and colder more like a moonbeam than a mortal woman. Soon I fear you will fade from my grasp altogether, and I shall have nothing left but the recollection that you did not care enough for me to confide in me. I am sure there is something dreadful between you and Edward."
But between her and the earnest, devoted Hélène there was no sympathy. The new house was ready by October. Hélène would fain have had it made less comfortable, but this the Governor would not permit. It would be hung with furs when the bitter weather came in. No one paid much attention to Rose, who came and went, and wandered about at her own sweet will.
He and his brother now again came every evening, exchanging a mute clasp of the hand with Helene, and never venturing to ask any news. They had offered to watch by the bedside in succession, but she sent them away when ten o'clock struck; she would have no one in the bedroom during the night. One evening the Abbe, who had seemed absorbed by some idea since the previous day, took her aside.
Her friendlier mood was not lost on Canby who was quick to take advantage of it. He leaned over and laid his hand on hers as it rested on the saddle horn. "Your thoughts of me are kinder than usual, aren't they, Helene? You are less critical?" He spoke almost humbly. She smiled at him as she admitted: "Perhaps so."
"And did he say that you cut well?" the little maid went on, with a strange, wilful persistence in her idea. "He neither said that I did well nor yet that I did ill," replied Gottfried Gottfried. "Ah!" said Helene, "that was just like the Prince. He was afraid of flattering you and making you unfit for your work. But if he said nothing, depend upon it he was pleased."
Jeanne gave a cry of delight, and falling on her knees, began hunting for the apples, even under the chairs and the wardrobe. Meanwhile Rosalie, as though paralyzed, never moved, though she repeated: "What! it's you! What are you doing here? what are you doing here? Say!" Then she turned to Helene with the question: "Was it you who let him come in?"
But she had not recognized her benefactress, and with gasps and sobs began to relate how she had two children at home who were dying of hunger. Helene listened to her, struck dumb by this apparition. The children were without fire to warm them; the elder was going off in a decline. But all at once Mother Fetu's words came to an end.
Helene Jegado's past was inquired into, and a strange and dreadful Odyssey the last twenty years of her life proved to be. It was an Odyssey of death. Sixteen years later one of those aunts, Helene Liscouet, took Helene with her into service with M. Conan, cure at Seglien, and it was here that Helene Jegado's evil ways would appear first to become manifest.
Another lady had been left a widow with a big lad who struck her; he might die, and there would be no difficulty in comforting her. Helene appeared to be listening to all this; she did not stir, but her whole frame quivered with impatience. "You are calmer now," said Mademoiselle Aurelie, after a time. "Well, in the end we always have to get the better of our feelings."
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