Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/126

122 tell what fair hair may not have been forgotten in the search after a Greek root?"

Valerie shivers. Heaven help that shattered heart! Every word that touches on the master-passion of her life is a wound that pierces it to the core.

"You do not smoke, Blurosset. Foolish man you do not know how to live. Pardon, madame." He lights his cigar at the green-shaded gas-lamp, seats himself close to the stove, and smokes for a few minutes in silence.

Valerie, still seated before the little table, watches him with fixed eyes, waiting for him to speak.

In the utter shipwreck of her every hope this adventurer is the only anchor to which she can cling. Presently he says, in his most easy and indifferent manner,—

"It was the fashion at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century for the ladies of Italy to acquire a certain knowledge of some of the principles of chemistry. Of course, at the head of these ladies we must place Lucretia Borgia."

Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent. Valerie looks from Raymond to the blue spectacles; but the face of the chemist testifies no shade of surprise at the singularity of Raymond's observation.

"Then," continued Monsieur Marolles, "if a lady was deeply injured or cruelly insulted by the man she loved; if her pride was trampled in the dust, or her name and her weakness held up to ridicule and contempt—then she knew how to avenge herself and to defy the world. A tender pressure of the traitor's hand; a flower or a ribbon given as a pledge of love; the leaves of a book hastily turned over with the tips of moistened fingers—people had such vulgar habits in those days—and behold the gentleman died, and no one was any the wiser but the worms, with whose constitutions aqua tofana at second hand may possibly have disagreed."

"Vultures have died from the effects of poisoned carrion," muttered Monsieur Blurosset.

"But in this degenerate age," continued Raymond, "what can our Parisian ladies do when they have reason to be revenged on a traitor? The poor blunderers can only give him half a pint of laudanum, or an ounce or so of arsenic, and run the risk of detection half an hour after his death! I think that time is a circle, and that we retreat as we advance, in spite of our talk of progress."

His horrible words, thrice horrible when contrasted with the coolness of his easy manner, freeze Valerie to the very heart; but she does not make one effort to interrupt him.

"Now," my good Blurosset," he resumes, "what I want of