Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/176

152 serious danger. What times the Count retired to his studio with Guidon or they went out together, Landrillon seized the opportunity to harass the young woman. He pursued her from one apartment to another, and to escape from his enterprise, she had to shut herself up in her room, although he went so far as to threaten to break in the door.

Just as in the town, in the days of the Dowager, Henry had no one to serve him in the house except Blandine and Landrillon. The five Klaarvatsch lads attached to his person were not housed in the château. So that very often, the unfortunate housekeeper found herself almost abandoned to the mercy of this rascal.

Life became unbearable to the young woman. If she refrained from complaining to Kehlmark, it was because she thought this trifling joker, this low bred buffoon, was indispensable to Henry's amusement. Such was her devotion to the Dykgrave that the noble girl would have scrupled to deprive him of the least object capable of diverting him from his melancholy and depression. Thus she witnessed with a stoical self-denial the influence which the young Govaertz