Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/136

132 elude the opera. He requested the indulgence of the audience for a favourite ballet which would commence immediately.

The orchestra began the overture of the ballet, and several of the audience rose to leave the house.

"Will you stop any longer, Valerie? or has this dismal finale dispirited you?" said the marquis.

"A little," said Valerie; "besides, we have promised to look in at Madame de Vermanville's concert before going to the duchess's ball."

Monsieur Rinval helped to muffle her in her cloak, and then offered her his arm. As they passed from the great entrance to the carriage of the marquis, Valerie dropped her bouquet. A gentleman advanced from the crowd and restored it to her.

"I congratulate you alike on your strength of mind, as on your beauty, mademoiselle!" he said, in a whisper too low for her companions to hear, but with a terrible emphasis on the last word.

As she stepped into the carriage, she heard a bystander say—

"Poor fellow, only seven-and-twenty! And so marvellously handsome and gifted!"

"Dear me," said Monsieur Rinval, drawing up the carriage window, "how very shocking! De Lancy is dead!"

Valerie did not utter one exclamation at this announcement. She was looking steadily out of the opposite window. She was counting the lamps in the streets through the mist of a winter's night.

"Only twenty-seven!" she cried hysterically, "only twenty-seven! It might have been thirty-seven, forty-seven, fifty-seven! But he despised her love; he trampled out the best feelings of her soul; so it was only twenty-seven! Marvellously handsome, and only twenty-seven!"

"For heaven's sake open the windows and stop the carriage, Rinval!" cried the marquis—"I'm sure my niece is ill."

She burst into a long, ringing laugh.

"My dear uncle, you are quite mistaken. I never was better in my life; but it seems to me as if the death of this opera-singer has driven everybody mad."

They drove rapidly home, and took her into the house. The maid Finette begged that her mistress might be carried to the pavilion, but the marquis overruled her, and had his niece taken into her old suite of apartments in the mansion. The first physicians in Paris were sent for, and when they came they pronounced her to be seized by a brain-fever, which promised to be a very terrible one.