Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/639

536 "I fear I must. Let my arm go!"

"Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?"

"Dreadful!" said Harriet.

"Then when you see me now," said Alice hoarsely, "here again, kneeling quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn’t have them come together while his pursuer is so blind and headlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would know the danger better."

"How can it be prevented! What can I do!" cried Harriet.

"All night long," pursued the other, hurriedly, "I had dreams of him—and yet I didn’t sleep—in his blood. All day, I have had him near me."

"What can I do!" cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.

"If there is anyone who ’ll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?"

"Yes."

"Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he doesn’t know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is on the road—I know he is!—and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while there is time—if there is time—and not to meet him yet. A month or so will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head without."

The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face, and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet’s arm; and the place where she had been was empty.

time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment, comprising some half-dozen rooms;—a dull cold hall or corridor, a dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawing-room, or boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means of communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row