Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/140

136 merciful Heaven, ready to hear the prayer of every sinner, would be deaf to the despairing cries of such a guilty wretch as she.

So, impenitent and despairing, she wears out the time, and waits for death. Sometimes she thinks of the arch tempter who smoothed the path of crime and misery in which she had trodden, and, who, in doing so seemed so much a part of herself, and so closely linked with her anguish and her revenge, that she often, in the weakness of her shattered mind, wondered if there were indeed such a person, or whether he might not be only the hideous incarnation of her own dark thoughts. He had spoken though of payment, of reward for his base services. If he were indeed human as her wretched self, why did he not come to claim his due?

As the lonely impenitent woman pondered thus in the wintry dusk, her uncle entered the chamber in which she sat.

"My dear Valerie," he said, "I am sorry to disturb you, but a person has just arrived on horseback from Caen. He has travelled, he says, all the way from Paris to see you, and he knows that you will grant him an interview. I told him it was not likely you would do so, and that you certainly would not with my consent. Who can this person be who has the impertinence to intrude at such a time as this? His name is entirely unknown to me."

He gave her a card. She looked at it, and read aloud—

"'Monsieur Raymond Marolles.' The person is quite right, my dear uncle; I will see him."

"But, Valerie!" remonstrated the marquis.

She looked at him, with her mother's proud Spanish blood mantling in her pale cheek.

"My dear uncle," she said quietly, "it is agreed between us, is it not, that I am in all things my own mistress, and that you have entire confidence in me? When you cease to trust me, we had better bid each other farewell, for we can then no longer live beneath the same roof."

He looked with one imploring glance at the inflexible face, but it was fixed as death.

"Tell them," she said, "to conduct Monsieur Marolles to this apartment. I must see him, and alone."

The marquis left her, and in a few moments Raymond entered the room, ushered in by the groom of the chambers.

He had the old air of well-bred and fashionable indifference which so well became him, and carried a light gold-headed riding-whip in his hand.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "will perhaps pardon my intrusion of this evening, which can scarcely surprise her, if she will be