The Message | Page 5

as women only can give you. In that look of hers

there was the pardonable curiosity of the mistress of the house
confronted with a guest dropped down upon her from the skies and
innumerable doubts, certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by
my youth and my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all
the disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save one are
as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and alarms; and, above all,
the thought that it was tiresome to have an unexpected guest just now,
when, no doubt, she had been scheming to enjoy full solitude for her
love. This mute eloquence I understood in her eyes, and all the pity and
compassion in me made answer in a sad smile. I thought of her, as I
had seen her for one moment, in the pride of her beauty; standing in the
sunny afternoon in the narrow alley with the flowers on either hand;
and as that fair wonderful picture rose before my eyes, I could not
repress a sigh.
"Alas, madame, I have just made a very arduous journey----,
undertaken solely on your account."
"Sir!"
"Oh! it is on behalf of one who calls you Juliette that I am come," I
continued. Her face grew white.
"You will not see him to-day."
"Is he ill?" she asked, and her voice sank lower.
"Yes. But for pity's sake, control yourself. . . . He intrusted me with
secrets that concern you, and you may be sure that never messenger
could be more discreet nor more devoted than I."
"What is the matter with him?"
"How if he loved you no longer?"
"Oh! that is impossible!" she cried, and a faint smile, nothing less than
frank, broke over her face. Then all at once a kind of shudder ran
through her, and she reddened, and she gave me a wild, swift glance as
she asked:
"Is he alive?"
Great God! What a terrible phrase! I was too young to bear that tone in
her voice; I made no reply, only looked at the unhappy woman in
helpless bewilderment.
"Monsieur, monsieur, give me an answer!" she cried.
"Yes, madame."
"Is it true? Oh! tell me the truth; I can hear the truth. Tell me the truth!

Any pain would be less keen than this suspense."
I answered by two tears wrung from me by that strange tone of hers.
She leaned against a tree with a faint, sharp cry.
"Madame, here comes your husband!"
"Have I a husband?" and with those words she fled away out of sight.
"Well," cried the Count, "dinner is growing cold.--Come, monsieur."
Thereupon I followed the master of the house into the dining-room.
Dinner was served with all the luxury which we have learned to expect
in Paris. There were five covers laid, three for the Count and Countess
and their little daughter; my own, which should have been HIS; and
another for the canon of Saint-Denis, who said grace, and then asked:
"Why, where can our dear Countess be?"
"Oh! she will be here directly," said the Count. He had hastily helped
us to the soup, and was dispatching an ample plateful with portentous
speed.
"Oh! nephew," exclaimed the canon, "if your wife were here, you
would behave more rationally."
"Papa will make himself ill!" said the child with a mischievous look.
Just after this extraordinary gastronomical episode, as the Count was
eagerly helping himself to a slice of venison, a housemaid came in with,
"We cannot find madame anywhere, sir!"
I sprang up at the words with a dread in my mind, my fears written so
plainly in my face, that the old canon came out after me into the garden.
The Count, for the sake of appearances, came as far as the threshold.
"Don't go, don't go!" called he. "Don't trouble yourselves in the least,"
but he did not offer to accompany us.
We three--the canon, the housemaid, and I--hurried through the garden
walks and over the bowling-green in the park, shouting, listening for an
answer, growing more uneasy every moment. As we hurried along, I
told the story of the fatal accident, and discovered how strongly the
maid was attached to her mistress, for she took my secret dread far
more seriously than the canon. We went along by the pools of water; all
over the park we went; but we neither found the Countess nor any sign
that she had passed that way. At last we turned back, and under the
walls of some outbuildings I heard a smothered, wailing cry, so stifled
that it was scarcely audible. The sound seemed to come from a place
that might have been a granary. I went in at all risks, and there we

found Juliette. With the