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Not that the slightest twinge of remorse disturbed his mind, but he feared some impulsive action on her part, which indirectly might interfere with his future plans. Fortunately no one took much heed of the darkly-clad, insignificant little figure that glided so swiftly by, obviously determined to escape attention. In the hall he found Demoiselle Candeille waiting for him.
Cautiously he made his way amongst the ruins, until he stopped short in amazement not unmingled with horror. In an angle where a part of the walls was still standing, a woman was on her knees, her hands stretched wildly out before her, her darkly-clad figure faintly revealed by the beams of the waning moon.
The professor stood much at the window, and once or twice he imagined he caught a glimpse, somewhere down the road, of a darkly-clad woman's figure; but she never came nearer, and he decided it must be a hallucination of his fading eyes. Eleven o'clock struck from the little ormolu timepiece.
She saw Bressant standing, lightly erect, near the centre of the road, could discern his darkly-clad, well-knit figure, seemingly gigantic in the gloom: his head turned toward the on-rushing mare, one foot a little advanced, his arms partly raised, and bent: remarked what a marvelous mingling of grace and power was in his form and bearing: as the watch ticked again, she saw him spring forward and upward, grasping and dragging down both reins in his hands: another tick he was dashed against Dolly's shoulder, and his body swung around along the shaft, but without loosening his hold upon the reins: tick, tick, tick, the mare's headway was slackened; the dragging at the bit of that great weight was more than she could carry; tick, tick, tick, she staggered on a few paces, trailing Bressant along the road; tick, tick, she came to a panting, trembling stand-still; Bressant let go the reins, but, instead of rising to his feet, he dropped loosely to the earth and lay there; tick the five seconds were up, and Cornelia drew her second breath.
"You are passing kind to the youth, Marmaduke," said Mistress de Chavasse meditatively when the young man's darkly-clad figure had disappeared up the stairs. She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her head resting against the carved woodwork. The folds of her simple gown hung primly round her well-shaped figure.
And having said that she turned on her heel and slowly walked away, leaving behind her an ocean of desolation. She walked away with a slow, swinging stride, one hand on her hip, her head thrown back. For a long time her darkly-clad figure was silhouetted against the evening sky, a speck of blackness upon the immensity around.
The meeting took place some seven days after the affair in the back parlor, and on the same ground. Business being finished, Galahad, who presided, stood up, looking, in his white duck suit among his darkly-clad companions, like a white sheep among black ones, and begged leave to order "dlasses" from the front room.
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