Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/318

 not lost yet. Open that box and help me to load my pistols. Strange, that I should have practised with them for years, only to beat Madame de Sabran, and now to-night we must both trust our safety to a true eye and a steady hand!"

Pale, tearless, and collected, Cerise obeyed. Her mother, drawing the weapons from their case, wiped them with her delicate handkerchief, and proceeded to charge them carefully, and with a preoccupied air, like a mother preparing medicine for a child. Holding the ramrod between her beautiful white teeth, while her delicate and jewelled fingers shook the powder into the pan, she explained to Cerise the whole mystery of loading and priming the deadly weapons. She would thus, as she observed, always have one barrel in reserve. The younger woman listened attentively. Her lip was steady, though her hand shook, and now that the worst was come she showed that peculiar quality of race which is superior to the common fighting courage possessed indiscriminately by all classes—the passive concentrated firmness, which can take every advantage so long as a chance is left, and die without a word at last, when hope gives place to the resignation of despair.

She even pointed out to her mother, that by half closing the shutter, the Marquise, herself unseen, could command the approach to the front door. Then taking a crucifix from her bosom, she pressed it to her lips, and said, "I am ready now, mamma. I am calm. I can do anything you tell me. Kiss me once more, dear, as you used when I was a child. And if we must die, it will not seem so hard to die together."

The Marquise answered by a long clinging embrace, and then the two women sat them down in the gloomy shadows of their chamber, haggard, tearless, silent, watching for the near approach of a merciless enemy armed with horrors worse than death.