down now and then in a very fierce and threatening frown. She wore a dark silk dress; some black lace, much after the manner of a Spanish mantilla fell from the back of her head on to her ample shoulders; a twisted gold chain circled her grandly formed throat; heavy ornaments of red coral and dead gold hung from her delicate ears; her small, supple hands were decorated with several superb rings;—her appearance altogether was very striking, but it was not wholly attractive. There was something startling about the fire of those dark eyes, and the bistrous circles of which they were the gleaming centres. It seemed as though she despised all charm of girlishness, or softness of manner, or restraint of emotion. She was angry and impatient. She did not care to conceal this fact. She beat upon the carpet with her foot, or drummed with her clenched hand upon the table. As to age, she had passed her premiere jeunesse. She looked thirty. She was probably younger; for women of her brunette complexion are generally not so old as they appear; with the blonde, the converse of the proposition holds good.
"If he should not come—" she repeated.
"Well, if he should not come, Mademoiselle Regine?" Monsieur Alexis asked mockingly. They both spoke with a strong foreign accent. "What will happen then? "
"I shall think you have cheated me, little boy, and I shall punish you," she said in a meaning way, with a very angry frown.
Alexis glanced at her as though to be sure that he had rightly heard. Perhaps from the expression of her face he judged it best to make no further reply. He looked again from the window and with his head turned from the woman, Mademoiselle Regine as he called her, he indulged himself with the relaxation of twisting his features into a sufficiently hideous grimace. By this means he discovered that a new source of gratification was available to him. A servant in one of the opposite houses cleaning the windows, paused in her dangerous employment, attracted evidently by the facial contortions of Monsieur Alexis. Was it not possible by persistence in a course of elaborate grimace, so to fascinate and bewilder the poor woman until in the end, her attention attracted from her work, she should fall headlong out of the window into the street? Monsieur Alexis chuckled aloud exultingly at the brilliance and cheerfulness of this idea! Suddenly he turned to Mademoiselle Regine.
"He's coming," he cried.
"Go, then," she answered, "and—take care—if you listen—" she pointed her forefinger at him warningly, and again she frowned. Alexis evidently understood the incomplete sentence.
"I don't want to listen," he muttered, sulkily. "Give me the money you promised me."
She took some gold from a porte-monnaie, and tossed it to him. She placed her hand upon her heart, as though to stay its turbulent beatings. Alexis hurried from the room. He had scarcely gone when a tall pale man entered.
"Monsieur Wilford!" the woman said, in a low voice, bowing her head.
"Regine!"
She placed a chair for him, and then withdrew to some distance. She remained standing in an almost humble attitude. By her gestures she begged him to be seated. He moved to a chair, but he contented himself with leaning upon it—perhaps because his hands trembled less, grasping tightly the back of the chair. She glanced at him stealthily, her breathing very quick, her fingers very restless. There was silence for some minutes.
"How you have changed!" she said, at length, in a subdued tone.
"Likely enough!" he answered. "Think how many years have passed since we have met!"
"Had I seen you in the street, I think I should have passed on and not known you. They told. me you were happy, gay, successful, fortunate. I see nothing of these in your face. You are very pale and triste-looking."
Her foreign manner and accent were more evident now that she was excited, agitated.
"I did not think anyone could have been so wretched as I have been, yet I look at you, Wilford—Monsieur Wilford, I mean—and it seems to me I may have been mistaken. Are you unhappy, Monsieur Wilford? But I see that you are."
He had paid but little attention to these words; he was pondering other things. At last he said, harshly:
"Regine, I never thought that we should meet again on this side the grave."
"It was inevitable," she said.
"I thought you were dead."
She glanced at him reproachfully.
"You hoped so, perhaps?" But he made no answer. She went on passionately in her foreign manner. "Well! and why not? Why should you not hope me to be dead? wish for me to be dead? You cannot have hoped it—prayed for it more than I have. I should have killed myself a thousand times, but that I am a woman! a fool! a coward! and I shrunk and shivered and fainted, and I did not dare! What have I ever done that you, that anyone, should wish me living? Nothing! nothing! Oh, how I am miserable!"
"Hush!" he said in kinder tones; "don't talk like that."
"Why did you think that I was dead?"
"They told me so at"
He paused.
"Where?"
"At St. Lazare!" he whispered.
She crouched down, hiding her face, then she started up fiercely.
"They lied—they are dogs. They said I was dead, because I had triumphed over them—tricked them—beaten them. At St. Lazare the prisoner who escapes is written down as dead in their books. They are liars!—fools! They watch the men carefully enough. They did not think that I could climb—like a man—like a monkey. That it was nothing to me to climb a water-pipe on to the roof of the female dormitories, and then drop from the wall, fourteen feet. 1. was light enough then. What matter that I cut my hands—that I sprained my foot? I could yet run for three miles. I was free! A new name—a new country. Who will recognise me? Who will care what I am—what I have done?"