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"Oh Grandfather, tell us a story, do. You know, the one you began the other evening about Mother Etienne's big farm. You remember. The weather is so bad and we can't go out. Go on, Grandfather, please." Coaxingly the three children clung round their grandfather, looking at him beseechingly. He adoring the children as he did, loved to hear them plead.
A ghost stood there in front of them Yollande and Germaine fell at Mother Etienne's feet in utter consternation. Yollande? Yes, Yollande, but what a Yollande! Heavens! Yollande plucked, literally plucked! Yollande emerging from her shroud like Lazarus from his tomb! Yollande risen from the dead! A cry of anguish burst from the heart of kind Mother Etienne. "Yollande, oh, Yollande!"
You shall say you come from Etienne Provancher and it will make you good for her." He paused, raised a brown finger, then went on. "But you shall not know where she live onless I may pay half the board money for the poor little one. We have been togedder in it I tell some lie to the coroner we must be togedder in help the childs." There was firm resolve in old Etienne's face and tones.
The duchess died towards morning, mourned by the servants of the household, who, for all comment, were heard to say beside her grave, "She was a comely woman, sent from Paradise." Etienne's sorrow was the most intense, the most lasting of sorrows, and wholly silent. He wandered no more among his rocks; he felt no strength to read or sing.
His mother, too, was doomed to live and die in the clouds of melancholy; and to him, from his birth up, she was the only being that existed on the earth, and filled for him the desert. Like all frail children, Etienne's attitude was passive, and in that he resembled his mother. The delicacy of his organs was such that a sudden noise, or the presence of a boisterous person gave him a sort of fever.
The brook murmured in solitude and silence, the birds sang undisturbed by the strife of men. The scene of Edwin's death from the arrows of Etienne's followers could hardly be identified; but under the very tree where Pierre had fallen in stern retaliation, Wilfred knelt, and besought pardon for himself and rest for the soul which he had sent so hurriedly before the judgment seat.
He could not force home any of his shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Étienne out of his coign to where in the open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again; and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his knees, with M. Étienne's sword in his breast.
He released Madame de la Baudraye's hand from his arm, and allowed Lousteau to draw it into his, with a tender look, as he pressed it to his heart. What a difference to Dinah! Etienne's arm thrilled her deeply. Bianchon's had not stirred her in the least. She and the journalist exchanged one of those glowing looks that are more than an avowal.
But he did neither. He was courteous and cold. Partly was his coldness real; he could not look on her as other than the daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who had schemed to kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to disaster. Partly was it mere absence; M. Étienne's plight was more to him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently to me.
On the great bed, where happiness never came, he looked for his beloved, and scarcely found her, so emaciated was she. White as her own laces, with scarcely a breath left, she gathered up all her strength to clasp Etienne's hand, and to give him her whole soul, as heretofore, in a look. Chaverny had bequeathed to her all his life in a last farewell.
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