Marquise recoiled a step, her face strangely altered and suddenly
gone grey, "and I have prayed that that curse might be worked out
upon that assassin, Marius. A fine husband, madame, you would
thrust upon the daughter of Gaston de La Vauvraye."

And turning, without waiting for an answer, she moved slowly down
the room, and took her way to her own desolate apartments, so full
of memories of him she mourned - of him, it seemed to her, she must
always mourn; of him who lay dead in the black waters of the moat
beneath her window.

Stricken with a sudden, inexplicable terror, the Dowager, who for
all her spirit was not without a certain superstition, felt her
knees loosen, and she sank limply into a chair. She was amazed at
the extent of Valerie's knowledge, and puzzled by it; she was
amazed, too, at the seeming apathy of Valerie for the danger in
which Florimond stood, and at her avowal that she did not care if
she never again beheld him. But such amazement as came to her was
whelmed fathoms-deep in her sudden fears for Marius. If he should
die! She grew cold at the thought, and she sat there, her hands
folded in her lap, her face grey. That mention of the curse the
Church had put upon them had frozen her quick blood and turned her
stout spirit to mere water.

At last she rose and went out into the open to inquire if no
messenger had yet arrived, for all that she knew there was not
yet time for any messenger to have reached the chateau. She mounted
the winding staircase of stone that led to the ramparts, and there
alone, in the November sunshine, she paced to and fro for hours,
waiting for news, straining her eyes to gaze up the valley of the