Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/104

88 shrank back, for they knew that death was behind the little door, and that they were in the presence of a sorrow greater than death.

Suddenly she turned upon them with a gesture of piteous triumph and said:

“You cannot have him now.”

Then she swayed and fell forward to the floor as the Abbé and George Fournel entered the room. The Abbé hastened to her side and lifted up her head.

George Fournel pushed the men back who would have entered the bathroom, and himself, bursting the door open, entered. Louis lay dead upon the floor. He turned to the constables.

“As she said, you cannot have him now. You have no right here. Go. I had a warning from the man he killed. I knew there would be trouble. But I have come too late,” he added bitterly.

An hour later the house was as still as the grave. Madame Marie sat with the doctor beside the bed of her dear mistress, and in another room, George Fournel, with the Avocat, kept watch beside the body of the Seigneur of Pontiac. The face of the dead man was as peaceful as that of a little child.

At ninety years of age, the present Seigneur of Pontiac, one Baron Fournel, lives in the Manor House left him by Madelinette Lajeunesse the great singer, when she died a quarter of a century ago. For thirty years he followed her from capital to capital of Europe and America to hear her sing, and to this day he talks of her in language more French than English in its ardour. Perhaps that is because his heart beats in sympathy with the Frenchmen he once disdained.