ad most
confidence.

"If this lasts long, I shall be ruined," she thought. "I shall be
obliged to call for assistance, and she will betray me."

It did not last long.

The patient's delirium was succeeded by such utter prostration that it
seemed each moment would be her last.

But toward midnight she appeared to revive a little, and in a voice of
intense feeling, she said:

"You have had no pity, Blanche. You have deprived me of all hope in
the life to come. God will punish you. You, too, shall die like a dog;
alone, without a word of Christian counsel or encouragement. I curse
you!"

And she died just as the clock was striking two.

The time when Blanche would have given almost anything to know that Aunt
Medea was beneath the sod, had long since passed.

Now, the death of the poor old woman affected her deeply.

She had lost an accomplice who had often consoled her, and she had
gained nothing, since one of her maids was now acquainted with the
secret of the crime at the Borderie.

Everyone who was intimately acquainted with the Duchesse de Sairmeuse,
noticed her dejection, and was astonished by it.

"Is it not strange," remarked her friends, "that the duchess--such a
very superior woman--should grieve so much for that absurd relative of
hers?"

But the dejection of Mme. Blanche was due in great measure to the
sinister prophecies of the accomplice to whom she had denied the last
consolations of religion.

And as her mind reviewed the past she shuddered, as the peasants at
Sairmeuse had done, when she thought of the fatality which had pursued
the shedders of innocent blood.

What misfortune had attended them all--from the sons of Chupin, the
miserable traitor, up to her father, the Marquis de Courtornieu, whose
mind had not been illumined by the least gleam of reason for ten long
years before his death.

"My turn will come!" she thought.

The Baron and the Baroness d'Escorval, and old Corporal Bavois had
departed this life within a month of each other, the previous year,
mourned by all.

So that of all the people of diverse condition who had been connected
with the troubles at Montaignac, Blanche knew only four who were still
alive.

Maurice d'Escorval, who had entered the magistracy, and was now a judge
in the tribunal of the Seine; Abbe Midon, who had come to Paris with
Maurice, and Martial and herself.

There was another person, the bare recollection of whom made her
tremble, and whose name