“Jacques, if I had reasons before on Renée’s account, what reasons have I not now?”
The boat shot off, and Jacques went in and fastened the gate and the door.
SOON after 1 o’clock Claire awoke and sat upright in her dim room. Her alarm at the absence of Dollard was swallowed instantly by greater alarm at the presence of some one else.
This small chamber, like the saloon, was lighted by one square window, and male housekeeping at St. Bernard, combined with the quality of glass manufactured for colonial use at that date, veiled generous moonlight which would have thrown up sharply every object in the severe place.
Claire’s garments, folded and laid upon a stool, were motionless to her expanding eyes; so were her boxes where Louise had placed them. All the luggage which a young lady of rank then carried with her to the ends of the earth could be lifted upstairs in the arms of a stout maid. Unstirring was the small black velvet cap which Claire had chosen from her belongings to wear during the voyage. It was stuck against the wall like a dim blot of ink. But nothing else visible seemed quite so motionless and unstirring as the figure by the bed. It was Mademoiselle de Granville. Except that her personality was oppressive, she seemed a lifeless lump without breath or sight, until Claire’s tenser pupils adapted to duskiness found eyes in the mask, eyes stiffly gazing.
The bride’s voice sunk in her throat, but she forced it to husky action.
Automatically, holding its elbows to its sides, the figure lifted one forearm and pointed to Claire’s garments.
“Be so kind as to withdraw, then, and I will put them on.”
It continued to point, without change of attitude or sound of human breath.
The girl crept out of her couch at that corner farthest from the figure, rolled up and pinned her white curls as best she could, and assimilated the garments from the stool, keeping her eye braced repellantly against the automaton pointing at her. She finished by drawing her mantle over her dress, and the velvet cap over her hair.
“Now I am ready, if you are determined I shall go somewhere with you.”
The figure turned itself about and opened the door into the saloon. Claire followed, keeping far behind those silent feet, and thus they walked through that grim room over which touches of beauty had never been thrown by a woman’s keeping.