Notwithstanding. Mary Cholmondeley
"Well, then, remember, Annette, that it is the same with evil actions. You were not actually guilty of it. Be thankful you were not."
"I am."
"When I saw you that first night at Fontainebleau, I thought you were on the verge of brain fever. I never slept for thinking of you."
"Well, you were right," said Annette tranquilly. "I suppose that is what you nursed me through. But that night I had no idea I was ill."
"You were absolutely desperate."
"Was I? I was angry. I must never be angry like that again. Dick said that, and he was right. Do you know what I was thinking of when you came out to me with the milk? Once, long ago, when I was a child, I was sent to a country farm after an illness, and I saw one of the farm hands moving some faggots. And behind it on the ground was a nest with a hen, a common hen, sitting on it, and a little baby-chicken looking out from under her wing. She was just hatching them out. I was quite delighted. I had never seen anything so pretty before. And the stupid men frightened her, and she thought they were coming for her young ones. And first she spread out her wings over them, and then she became angry. A kind of dreadful rage took her. And she trod down the eggs with her great feet, the eggs she had sat patiently on so long; and then she killed the little chickens with her strong beak. I can see her now, standing at bay in her broken nest with her bill streaming, making a horrible low sound. Don't laugh at me when I say that I felt just like that old hen. I was ready to rend everything to pieces, myself included, that night. When I was a child I thought it so strange of the hen to behave like that. I laughed at her at the time—just as Dick laughed at me. But I understand her now—poor thing."
CHAPTER VII
"The larger the nature the less susceptible to personal injury."
It was a few days later. Annette, leaning on Mrs. Stoddart's arm, had made a pilgrimage as far as the low garden wall to look at the little golden-brown calf on the other side tethered to a twisted shrub of plumbago, the blue flowers of which spread themselves into a miniature canopy over him. Now she was lying back, exhausted but triumphant, in her long chair, with Mrs. Stoddart knitting beside her.
"I shall be walking up there to-morrow," she said audaciously, pointing to the fantastic cactus-sprinkled volcanic hills rising steeply behind the house on the northern side.
Mrs. Stoddart vouchsafed no reply. Annette, more tired than she would allow, leaned back. Her eyes fell on the same view, which might have been painted on a drop scene so fixed was it, so identical in colour and light day after day. But to-day it proved itself genuine by the fact that a large German steamer, not there yesterday, was moored in the bay, so placed that it seemed to be impaled on the spike of the tallest tower, and keeping up the illusion by making from time to time a rumbling and unseemly noise as if in pain.
"You must own now that I am well," said Annette.
"Very nearly. You shall come up to the tomato-gardens to-morrow, and see the Spanish women working in their white trousers."
"My head never aches now."
"That is a good thing."
"Has the time come when I may ask a few questions?"
Mrs. Stoddart hardly looked up from her knitting as she said tranquilly—
"Yes, my child, if there is anything on your mind."
"I suppose Dick Le Geyt is—dead. I felt sure he was dying that last day at Fontainebleau. It won't be any shock to me to know that he is dead."
"He is not dead."
A swift glance showed Mrs. Stoddart that Annette was greatly surprised.
"How is he?" she asked after a moment. "Did he really get well again? I thought it was not possible."
"It was not."
"Then he is not riding again yet?"
"No. I am afraid he will never ride again."
"Then his back was really injured, after all?"
"Yes. It was spinal paralysis."
"He did enjoy life so," said Annette. "Poor Dick!"
"I made inquiries about him again a short time ago. He is not unhappy. He knows nothing and nobody, and takes no notice. The brain was affected, and it is only a question of time—a few months, a few years. He does not suffer."
"For a long time I thought he and I had died together."
"You both all but died, Annette."
"Where is he now?"
"In his aunt's house in Paris. She came down before I left."
"I hope she seemed a kind woman."
"She seemed a silly one. She brought her own doctor and Mr. Le Geyt's valet with her. She evidently distrusted the Fontainebleau doctor and me. She paid him up and dismissed him at once, and she as good as dismissed me."
"Perhaps," said Annette, "she thought you and the doctor were in collusion with me. I suppose some lurid story, with me in the middle of it, reached her at once."
"No doubt. The valet had evidently told her that his master had not gone down to Fontainebleau alone. She arrived prepared for battle."
"And where was I all the time?"
"You were in the country, a few miles out of Fontainebleau, at a house the doctor knew of. He helped me to move you there directly you became unconscious. Until you fell ill you would not leave Mr. Le Geyt. It was fortunate you were not there when his aunt arrived."
"I should not have cared."
"No. You were past caring about anything. You were not in your right mind. But surely, Annette,"—Mrs. Stoddart spoke very slowly—"you care now?"
Annette evidently turned the question over in her mind, and then looked doubtfully at her friend.
"I am grateful to you that I escaped the outside shame," she said. "But that seems such a little thing beside the inside shame, that I could have done as I did. I had been carefully brought up. I was what was called good. And it was easy to me. I had never felt any temptation to be otherwise, even in the irresponsible milieu at father's, where there was no morality to speak of. And yet—all in a minute—I could do as—as I did, throw everything away which only just before I had guarded with such passion. He was bad, and father was bad. I see now that he had sold me. But since I have been lying here I have come to see that I was bad too. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other. There was nothing to choose between the three of us. Poor Dick with his unpremeditated escapade was snow-white compared to us, the one kindly person in the sordid drama of lust and revenge."
"Where do I come in?" asked Mrs. Stoddart.
"As an unwise angel, I think, who snatched a brand from the burning."
"You are the first person who has had the advantage of my acquaintance who has called me unwise," said Mrs. Stoddart, with the grim, benevolent smile which Annette had learnt to love. "And now you have talked enough. The whole island is taking its siesta. It is time you took yours."
Mrs. Stoddart thought long over Annette and her future that night. She had made every effort, left no stone unturned at Fontainebleau, to save the good name which the girl had so recklessly flung away. When Annette succumbed, Mrs. Stoddart, quick to see whom she could trust, confided to the doctor that Annette was not Mr. Le Geyt's wife and appealed to him for help. He gravely replied that he already knew that fact, but did not mention how during the making of the will it had come to his knowledge. He helped her to remove Annette instantly to a private lodging kept by an old servant of his. There