Chapter VII: Part 7

“_Peste!_ this is a peevish return, _ma mie_. Are you such a child to cry at your draught, and when it comes in so pleasant a disguise? Why, it needs no physician to see the excited wakefulness in your eyes. Down with it, and you will sleep--take my word for it.”

“Henri, before God I have done no harm!”

“What resistance--out of all proportion with the act! Who said you had done harm--or, if he thought it, would dream of retaliating with such kindness. Come, shut your eyes and gulp.”

“I will not indeed.”

Desperate to run, she put a foot over the bedside. He held her back with a force gentle but irresistible.

“Henri!” she cried in agony, “I was wretched all the evening--O, believe me!”

“Ah! I thought you did a mistaken thing in going. What a pity you rejected my advice!”

She shrank from him, her throat gulping, her eyes clouded with horror.

“Your voice is cold,” she whispered--“cold, cold as your eyes, as your heart. O, Death! Will you have no mercy? Henri!”

“Why, you are overwrought, lady. This is foolish. Come, the broth is cooling.”

“Must I drink it?”

“To please me.”

“My confessor first--only for five minutes.”

“What! for a dose of medicine? You speak as though it were poison--the _morceau italianizé_! And even were it, what could lie to confess in so clear a conscience?”

“You never loved me. Give me the bowl.”

“I will hold it to your lips.”

“No, no, you cannot, you will not.”

“You make me obstinate, madam. I am not wont to be disobeyed.”

“O, horror!”

“I never loved you, you say. Do you love me?”

“Before God, yes!”

“A little thing to refuse your love. Come now, it must be done!”

A shudder convulsed her whole frame; and then suddenly she stiffened, white as ashes.

“I will drink it,” she said, “and then perhaps you will believe in me.”

With a hand as steady as a rock he held the bowl to her lips. Her teeth chattered on its rim a moment, and then she drank, and stopped.

“To the dregs,” he said quietly.

She took the cup from his hand, and, looking him straight in the eyes, drained it, threw it from her, and closing her lids, lay back.

One moment he stood gazing down, then, beckoning to his attendant, very softly left the room, locking the door behind him.

She never moved, she never opened her eyes. Still, as though death had already seized her, she lay there, a creeping rigor seeming to paralyse her limbs. Only her brain was busy, deliriously, unceasingly, gnawing like a rat in an empty house. What conscious reason it possessed was absorbed exclusively in the coming horror of her passing. She was stunned beyond any thought of eternity, or of the part her sinful soul must play in it. Love--the love of earth, of man, of power--was a thing shrunk to insignificance, a dreary, discredited enchantment. The thought of the poison that possessed her absorbed her whole being. She had nothing left in common with that sweet, fantastic conceit, a desirable woman. She was gold turned grey and acrid from contact with mercury--a thing preposterous and contaminated. How was the bane about to act, to assert its hideous mastery? Already strange stings and tremors were apparent in her veins. Was she to be drugged into a merciful oblivion, or wrenched and distorted out of all semblance to humanity? Fearful memories of tales she had heard whispered thronged into her mind. He would not have spared her the worst; why should he, a vengeance revealed so soulless, so calculatingly diabolic?

She felt the poison creeping up her veins. When it reached her heart, it would seize on there, she knew, and tear her to death with its red-hot fangs. A mortal terror throttled her; she was dying, helpless, abandoned, alone to all eternity. With a supreme effort she struggled momentarily out of the shadows, and uttered a choking scream.

The key turned in the lock and her husband entered.

“What is it, _ma mie_?” he said, and hurried to her side.

She turned a grey and ghastly face to him.

“The poison--O, the poison!”

“What poison?”

“The broth!”

“Foolish! It was just broth, no more. I swear it on my honour.”

“Henri!” Her hands began to tremble. He caught them in his own.

“I had hoped it would cure thy fever,” he said.

“It is cured,” she answered, and burst into overwhelming tears.

He took her into his arms. “Hush!” he said. “We have passed some unhappy hours, _mignonne_, each for the other’s sake. Now shall we call quits?”

[The End]

NOTE

These sketches, with a single exception, appeared originally, under the covering title “Historical Vignettes,” in _Truth_, to whose Editor the author’s thanks, for most kind permission to reprint, are given.

The fancy entitled “Fouquier-Tinville” was first published in the _English Review_, and is here included with due acknowledgments to the Editor.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The author produced two books titled _Historical Vignettes_: one in 1910 (T. Fisher Unwin, London), and the other in 1912 (Sidgwick & Jackson, London). Being the former, “1st Series” has been appended to the title to distinguish it from the later (_i.e._ “2nd Series”).

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ bascinet/basinet, mountain-crag/mountain crag, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

[Title Page]

Add “1st Series” to the book title. (See above).

[End of text]