Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/101

 The dowager duchess turned livid through her paint, but made no reply, and said insolently to one of the ladies in waiting, "Light that candle for me that is on the mantelpiece. It is like sitting in a vault."

The lady so harshly bidden to do this servile duty, performed it with an obsequious and unresisting humility, and as she did so, a large moth, with rich brown and yellow and mottled wings, and a black and yellow speckled body, settled on the wall before the light. It was a death's head moth, with that curious mark that is vulgarly supposed to resemble a skull unusually conspicuous on its thorax. It uttered a faint shrill plaintive cry like that of a mouse, and flew back into the darkness. It passed close to Mademoiselle Beatrice, wavered over to Professor Mohrart, then brushed the face of the ex-duchess with its wings, and settled on the table before the young duke, who, snatching the fan of a lady next him, struck at the moth with such force that, though he missed the insect, he snapped the stems of several wine-glasses. The hidden tiger within him leaped out now as he sprang up, threw down his chair, and tore at the great crimson bell-rope, till the corridors echoed again. and half a dozen servants hurried in with candelabra.

"Madame la Duchesse," he said, petulantly, to his mother, "you know I detest darkness, yet you will force me to sit here to save half a dozen wax candles. We will not be controlled. Charles, Louis, tell the major-domo we will dine no more without lights, no, not even in summer. There seems to be a doubt amongst some of you who reigns at Eisenherz; you shall soon learn. Mademoiselle Beatrice, I kiss your hand. Ladies, adieu. Gentlemen, the faro table is ready—let us try fortune again; and you fellows, search the room and kill that moth. I hate to have those things buzzing about."

"Poor moth," thought the professor. "Poor Eisenherz! That man will grow up a monster."

"That moth brings bad luck to some of us," said one of the footmen to another.

things were well known to the meanest lacqueys of the palace. First, that the dowager duchess detested the intended marriage of her stepson; secondly, that the quarrels between the duke and his ambitious stepmother were every day growing more embittered.

It was the evening of the day that the duchess was to return from Schwarzstein. The duke has come in tired from hunting, and retired to his private apartment. In the embrasure of a window in one of the brightly lit antechambers sat the young physician, looking out thoughtfully into the starry night, half sheltered by a heavy crimson velvet curtain which he held back from the mullioned panes.

"She loved me once," he thought. "She told me she did, and I loved her, till her father and the cruel world came between us. Does she love me still? Oh, could I but learn that!"

He started; for an icy hand like that of a corpse had touched him on the shoulder. He looked round. It was the duchess, who pointed to the open door of an inner boudoir, and led him in. She locked the door, and stood close to the surprised professor.

"Professor Mohrart," she said, "you well know how great a regard I feel for you. What honours we have destined for you, you may not know so well. We know you—wise, faithful, and true; we would trust you with an especial duty. We claim but one small service."

The young physician bowed gravely.

"Madame la Duchesse," he said, "I am a faithful servant of the house of Eisenherz. Your wishes are laws. All that I can do, subservient to my duty to God and man, I will do to serve either you or the duke."

"Answer me first one question truly. You did once love Mademoiselle Beatrice, the duke's betrothed?"

The young man hesitated; then, with almost a groan, he said, "I did."

"And you still love Beatrice Blossow?"

Professor Mohrart made no reply.

"You do love her. I have seen a letter you wrote her, urging her to fly with you to England, to escape the match she detested; you see, I know all. You have her letter, refusing to go, but professing unalterable love for you. Give me that letter; you are not rich. You shall have ten thousand Friedrich d'ors for that mere small square of pink paper."

The professor remained silent.

"You shall marry the daughter of the richest noble in all Eisenherz."

"Madame la Duchesse," said the professor at last, "you would prevent the marriage of the duke, it is clear. Whatever I may or may not have once felt, I now owe all humble homage and duty to that beautiful and amiable lady, and I will give you no help in this matter."

"You refuse, then?"

"I refuse."

"You defy my anger?"

"I neither defy it nor dread it. I refuse to help you to prevent the marriage of the duke, your stepson, with Mademoiselle Beatrice."

"You persist in that?"

"I do."

"You love her, and yet you would marry her to another! She loves you, yet prefers wealth and a title. Bah!"

"No; she has forgotten me; and I wish her to have that title, which is her ambition."

"And you deny recent letters?"

"I do. They may have been written, but they have never reached me."

"And your own of the fourth of last month?"

"That I wrote, but Mademoiselle Beatrice has not replied to me, Madame la Duchesse, since I broke off the engagement on her not answering my letter pressing her to fly at the first rumour of the duke's attentions."