"The day is fixed,my angel!"she cried;"You are to be married on the thirtieth!"She shifted one hand to her daughter's head,and clasped it with a fierce fondness to her bosom."Oh,my darling,you had lovely hair even when you were a baby!We won't have it dressed at your wedding.It shall flow down naturally in all its beauty--and no hand shall brush it but mine."She pressed her lips on Minna's head,and devoured it with kisses;then,driven by some irresistible impulse,pushed the girl away from her,and threw herself on the sofa with a cry of pain.
"Why did you start up,as if you were afraid of me,when I came in?"she said wildly."Why did you ask if you were in the way?Oh,Minna!Minna!can't you forget the day when I locked you out of my room?My child!Iwas beside myself--I was mad with my troubles.Do you think I would behave harshly to you?Oh,my own love!when I came to tell you of your marriage,why did you ask me if you were in the way?My God!am I never to know a moment's pleasure again without something to embitter it?
People say you take after your father,Minna.Are you as cold-blooded as he was?There!there!I don't mean it;I am a little hysterical,Ithink--don't notice me.Come and be a child again.Sit on my knee,and let us talk of your marriage."Minna put her arm round her mother's neck a little nervously."Dear,sweet mamma,how can you think me so hard-hearted and so ungrateful?Ican't tell you how I love you!Let this tell you."With a tender and charming grace,she kissed her mother--then drew back a little and looked at Madame Fontaine.The subsiding conflict of emotions still showed itself with a fiery brightness in the widow's eyes."Do you know what I am thinking?"Minna asked,a little timidly.
"What is it,my dear?"
"I think you are almost too fond of me,mamma.I shouldn't like to be the person who stood between me and my marriage--if _you_knew of it."Madame Fontaine smiled."You foolish child,do you take me for a tigress?"she said playfully."I must have another kiss to reconcile me to my new character."She bent her head to meet the caress--looked by chance at a cupboard fixed in a recess in the opposite wall of the room--and suddenly checked herself."This is too selfish of me,"she said,rising abruptly."All this time I am forgetting the bridegroom.His father will leave him to hear the good news from you.Do you think I don't know what you are longing to do?"She led Minna hurriedly to the door."Go,my dear one--go and tell Fritz!"The instant her daughter disappeared,she rushed across the room to the cupboard.Her eyes had not deceived her.The key _was_left in the lock.
CHAPTER II
Madame Fontaine dropped into a chair,overwhelmed by the discovery.
She looked at the key left in the cupboard.It was of an old-fashioned pattern--but evidently also of the best workmanship of the time.On its flat handle it bore engraved the words,"Pink-Room Cupboard"--so called from the color of the curtains and hangings in the bedchamber.
"Is my brain softening?"she said to herself."What a horrible mistake!
What a frightful risk to have run!"
She got on her feet again,and opened the cupboard.
The two lower shelves were occupied by her linen,neatly folded and laid out.On the higher shelf,nearly on a level with her eyes,stood a plain wooden box about two feet in height by one foot in breadth.She examined the position of this box with breathless interest and care--then gently lifted it in both hands and placed it on the floor.On a table near the window lay a half-finished watercolor drawing,with a magnifying glass by the side of it.Providing herself with the glass,she returned to the cupboard,and closely investigated the place on which the box had stood.
The slight layer of dust--so slight as to be imperceptible to the unassisted eye--which had surrounded the four sides of the box,presented its four delicate edges in perfectly undisturbed straightness of line.
This mute evidence conclusively proved that the box had not been moved during her quarter of an hour's absence in Mr.Keller's room.She put it back again,and heaved a deep breath of relief.
But it was a bad sign (she thought)that her sense of caution had been completely suspended,in the eagerness of her curiosity to know if Mr.
Keller's message of invitation referred to the wedding day."I lose my best treasure,"she said to herself sadly,"if I am beginning to lose my steadiness of mind.If this should happen again--"She left the expression of the idea uncompleted;locked the door of the room;and returned to the place on which she had left the box.
Seating herself,she rested the box on her knee and opened it.
Certain tell-tale indentations,visible where the cover fitted into the lock,showed that it had once been forced open.The lock had been hampered on some former occasion;and the key remained so fast fixed in it that it could neither be turned nor drawn out.In her newly-aroused distrust of her own prudence,she was now considering the serious question of emptying the box,and sending it to be fitted with a lock and key.
"Have I anything by me,"she thought to herself,"in which I can keep the bottles?"She emptied the box,and placed round her on the floor those terrible six bottles which had been the special subjects of her husband's precautionary instructions on his death-bed.Some of them were smaller than others,and were manufactured in glass of different colors--the six compartments in the medicine-chest being carefully graduated in size,so as to hold them all steadily.The labels on three of the bottles were unintelligible to Madame Fontaine;the inscriptions were written in barbarously abridged Latin characters.
The bottle which was the fourth in order,as she took them out one by one,was wrapped in a sheet of thick cartridge-paper,covered on its inner side with characters written in mysterious cipher.But the label pasted on the bottle contained an inscription in good readable German,thus translated: