Page:The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc (1900).djvu/19

Rh eral seized him, while one dealt a vicious stroke on his chin.

Satiani extricated himself from the grasp of his assailants; at the same moment, while some women were holding the unconscious girl, a voice shouted, "It is Monsieur Le Blanc's daughter." At this the crowd turned its attention toward Madeline, and Doctor Satiani disappeared.

Still unconscious, she was carried home. The father had followed the company of soldiers, so that there was no one at the cottage save Madeline's mother. She fell to weeping bitterly, as she caressed the white, corpse-like figure.

"It was as the soldiers were marching away," said Irène, a girl with eyes and hair as black as a raven's wing, who had followed the sorrowful burden from the Hôtel de Ville. Everything was told the mother, but she would not be comforted; the father had not yet returned, and poor Madeline's face, which had never very much color, lay white and smooth like the face of a wax figure, amid her curly tresses that looked all the more golden by the awful contrast.

Several women of the neighborhood