"But you must go," said Céleste; "perhaps it is another in trouble like myself. I will wait for you here, Oliver; I am not afraid."
Oliver could not resist such an appeal; he turned, and began heavily ascending the stairs to the floor above. A door at a little distance stood ajar; it was thence that the monotonous sounds came. He advanced hesitatingly towards it, and reaching out his hand, pushed it, and it gaped slowly open upon the room beyond. Oliver only looked within for a moment, and then turned and walked stupidly away, but what he saw in that one glance was impressed upon his mind in an image never to be erased.
Tables and chairs were overturned; books lay torn and scattered upon the floor. In the middle of the room sat the woman whom he had first seen in the moonlit street at Flourens, and her pale, vacant eyes were fixed blankly upon him. Her white lips were slightly parted, but there was never a twitch upon the face that uttered those monotonous sobs that sounded dully through the silence.
Upon the floor lay stretched, bruised, battered, and bleeding, the withered, shrunken figure of an aged man, his limbs a mass of dried skin and bones. The yellow, parchment-like skin was stretched over his head and his face so tightly that it seemed as though it would crack. The shadow of death brooded upon him as he gazed with filmy, sightless eyes into the dark hollow of eternity that lay beyond. His breast, for a long time motionless, now and then heaved convulsively with the laboring breath. Such was the vision that Oliver saw in that one glance. Then he turned and walked away.
Oliver answered never a word, but taking her by the hand, led her forcibly down the stairs and out of the house.
There was a seven days' gossip in Paris. All manner of rumors were afloat, for strange things had happened at the Hôtel de Flourens. The marquis had had a sudden stroke of apoplexy upon the very day of his daughter's wedding. But when they had called the family, she and that handsome young husband of hers were nowhere to be found. They had left the hôtel, and did not return again until long after nightfall. Where they had been was a profound secret which they kept locked within their own breasts. But the poor marquis, he was dying. He had never once spoken since he had fallen under the attack. Dr. Raymond-Brasse, and the other physicians who attended him, said that it would be little less than a miracle if he lasted until Wednesday.