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Page 62
"Thank you," said Lucan, with grave emotion; "thank you; I love you very
much."
As she was drawing him gently toward her he clasped her in a frank and
affectionate embrace, and pressed his lips upon the forehead she was
holding up to him; but at the same instant he felt her supple figure
stiffen; her head rolled back; then she sank bodily, and slipped in his
arms like a flower whose stem has suddenly been mowed down.
There was a bench within two steps; he carried her there, but after laying
her upon it, instead of affording her the required assistance, he remained
in an attitude of strange immobility before that lovely and helpless form.
A long silence followed, broken only by the gentle and monotonous ripple
of the brook. Shaking off his stupor at last, Monsieur de Lucan called out
several times in a loud and almost harsh voice:
"Julia! Julia!"
As she remained motionless still, he ran down into the ravine, took some
water in the hollow of his hand, and bathed her temples with it. In the
course of a minute or two, he saw her eyes opening in the darkness, and he
helped her raise her head.
"What is it?" she said, looking at him with a wild expression; "what has
happened, sir?"
"Why, you fainted," said Lucan, laughing.
"Fainted?" repeated Julia.
"Of course; that's just what I feared; you must have been benumbed by the
cold. Can you walk? Come, try."
"Perfectly well," she said, rising and taking his arm.
Like all those who experience sudden prostration, Julia remembered, but in
a very indistinct manner, the circumstance that had brought about her
fainting.
In the meantime they had resumed their walk slowly in the direction of the
chateau.
"Fainted!" she repeated, gayly; "mon Dieu! how perfectly ridiculous!"
Then, with sudden animation:
"But what did I say? Did I speak at all?"
"You said, 'I am cold!' and away you went!"
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Did you think I was dead?"
"I did hope for a moment that you were," said Lucan, coldly.
"How horrid of you! But we were talking before that. What were we saying?"
"We were making a pact of amity and friendship."
"Well! it doesn't look much like it now, Monsieur de Lucan!"
"Madam?"
"You seem positively angry with me because I fainted."
"Of course I am. In the first place, I don't like that sort of adventures,
and then, it is wholly your own fault; you are so imprudent, so
unreasonable!"
"Oh! mon Dieu! Don't you want a switch?"
And as the lights of the chateau were coming into sight:
"_Apropos_, don't trouble mother with any of that nonsense, will you?"
"Certainly not; you may rest easy on that score."
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