She stood
silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he
sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in
France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to
arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the
light fell so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air
looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never
seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of
Blanche de Maletroit measured out the time like the ticking of a
clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until
his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he
imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and
again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were
running, and death was on the march.
Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair,
Denis thought, in the whole world of womankind.
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