Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/250

246 "You say, madame, that if I do not wish to be given up to justice as the accomplice of a murderer, I shall not suffer you to leave this room, but sacrifice you to the preservation of my own safety. Nothing more easy, madame; I have only to raise my hand—to wave a handkerchief, medicated in the manner of those the Borgias and Medicis used of old, before your face; to scatter a few grains of powder into that fire at your feet; to give you a book to read, a flower to smell; and you do not leave this room alive. And this is how I should act, if I were, what you say I am, the accomplice of a murderer."

"How, monsieur!—you had no part in the murder of my husband?—you, who gave me the drug which killed him?"

"You jump at conclusions, madame. How do you know that the drug which I gave you killed Gaston de Lancy?"

"Oh, for pity's sake, do not juggle with me, Monsieur. Speak! What do you mean?"

"Simply this, madame. That the death of your husband on the evening of the day on which you gave him the drugged wine may have been—a coincidence."

"Oh, monsieur! in mercy"

"Nay, madame, it was a coincidence. The drug I gave you was not a poison. You are guiltless of your husband's death."

"Oh, heaven be praised! Merciful heaven be praised!" She falls on her knees, and buries her head in her hands in a wild burst of tearful thanksgiving.

While her face is thus hidden, Blurosset takes from a little cabinet on one side of the fireplace a handful of a light-coloured powder, which he throws upon the expiring cinders in the grate. A lurid flame blazes up, illuminating the room with a strange unnatural glare.

"Valerie, Countess de Marolles," he says, in a tone of solemn earnestness, "men say I am a magician—a sorcerer—a disciple of the angel of darkness! Nay, some more foolish than the rest have been so blasphemous as to declare that I have power to raise the dead. Yours is no mind to be fooled by such shallow lies as these. The dead never rise again in answer to the will of mortal man. Lift your head, Valerie—not Countess de Marolles. I no longer call you by that name, which is in itself a falsehood. Valerie de Lancy, look yonder!"

He points in the direction of the open door. She rises, looks towards the threshold, staggers a step forward, utters one long wild shriek, and falls senseless to the floor.

In all the agonies she has endured, in all the horrors through which she has passed, she has never before lost her senses. The cause must indeed be a powerful one.