Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/99

Rh took the case out of my pocket, opened it, and held it out toward her. For once the duchess sat stock-still, her eyes round and large.

“Have you been robbing and murdering my husband?” she gasped.

With a very complacent smile I began my story. Who does not know what it is to begin a story with a triumphant confidence in its favorable reception? Who does not know that first terrible glimmer of doubt when the story seems not to be making the expected impression? Who has not endured the dull dogged despair in which the story, damned by the stony faces of the auditors, has yet to drag on a hated weary life to a dishonored grave?

These stages came and passed as I related to Mme. de Saint-Maclou how I came to be in a position to hand back to her the Cardinal’s Necklace. Still, silent, pale, with her lips curled in a scornful smile, she sat and listened. My tone lost its triumphant ring, and I finished in cold, distant, embarrassed accents.

“I have only,” said I, “to execute my commission and hand the box and its contents over to you.”

And, thus speaking, I laid the necklace in its case on the corn bin beside the duchess.

The duchess said nothing at all. She looked at me once—just once; and I wished then and there that I had listened to Gustave de Berensac’s second thoughts and left with him at ten o’clock in the morning. Then having delivered this barbed shaft of the eyes, the duchess sat looking straight in front of her, bereft of her