Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/63

Blue Beard bodies of seven dead women with their feet dangling a few inches above the horrible pool in which their blood had mingled. … Little doubt but these were the wives whom Blue Beard had married and whose throats he had cut, one after another!

Poor Fatima thought to die of fear, and the key, which she had pulled from the lock, fell from her hand. When she had regained her senses a little, she picked it up and locked the door again; but her hand shook so that this was no easy feat, and she tottered upstairs to recover herself in her own room. But she found it filled with her officious friends, who, being occupied with envy of her riches and having no reason to guess that, in a husband's absence, anything could afflict so fortunate a wife, either honestly ignored her pallor or hoped (while promising to come again) that they had not overtired her by their visit.

They promised, too, to repeat their call very soon, at the same time inquiring how long her husband's journey might be expected to last. It was plain that they feared him, one and all. Half an hour ago she might have wondered at this.

They were gone at last. Fatima, drawing the 37