Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/151

Rh the bedchamber: she sits down, and as he appears to wait for her to speak, she says,—

"I have heard of your fame, monsieur, and come"

"Nay, madame," he says, interrupting her, "you can raise your veil if you will. I perfectly remember you; I never forget voices, Mademoiselle de Cevennes."

There is no shade of impertinence in his manner as he says this; he speaks as though he were merely stating a simple fact which it is as well for her to know. He has the air, in all he does or says, of a scientific man who has no existence out of the region of science.

Valerie—for it is indeed she—raises her veil.

"Monsieur," she says, "you are candid with me, and it will be the best for me to be frank with you. I am very unhappy—I have been so for some months past; and I shall be so until my dying day. One reason alone has prevented my coming to you long ere this, to offer you half my fortune for such another drug as that which you sold to me some time past. You may judge, then, that reason is a very powerful one, since, though death alone can give me peace, I yet do not wish to die. But I wish to have at my command a means of certain death. I may never use it at all: I swear never to use it on anyone but myself!"

All this time the blue spectacles have been fixed on her face, and now Monsieur Blurosset interrupts her—

"And now for such a drug, mademoiselle, you would offer me a large sum of money?" he asks.

"I would, monsieur."

"I cannot sell it you," he says, as quietly as though he were speaking of some unimportant trifle.

"You cannot?" she exclaims.

"No, mademoiselle. I am a man absorbed entirely in the pursuit of science. My life has been so long devoted to science only, that perhaps I may have come to hold everything beyond the circle of my little laboratory too lightly. You asked me some time since for a poison, or at least you were introduced to me by a pupil of mine, at whose request I sold you a drug. I had been twenty years studying the properties of that drug. I may not know them fully yet, but I expect to do so before this year is out. I gave it to you, and, for all I know to the contrary, it may in your hands have done some mischief." He pauses here and looks at her for a moment; but she has borne the knowledge of her crime so long, and it has become so much a part of her, that she does not flinch under his scrutiny.

"I placed a weapon in your hands," he continues, "and I had no right to do so. I never thought of this at that time; but I have thought of it since. For the rest, I have no inducement to sell you the drug you ask for. Money is of little use to me.