Her Last Stake, Chapters I-V [pp. 815-839]

HER LAST STAKE.
"Ha! yes, that is true. I must tell them that! You see,
it is very disagreeable for me; people saying that she was in
despair-that-that I was hard upon her, in fact. I,do not
think so; do you? I really could not keep her for ever."
,No," said his hearer mechanically; and within herself she
was thinking, "one cannot expect a hotel-keeper to be merciful;
but what an awful, awful thing it would be to drive a fellowcreature to despair!'"
"Monsieur Grosjean," she called softly after him as he was
turning away, " one thing I should like to ask you."
"A4 votre service, via swar?
"'Where is-she?"
"The body, you mean? In a room near the station. It will
be buried to-morrow."
"I should like to see her once more. Would it be possible?"
"Why- yes, I suppose so. I will write a line which you
can present to the people of the house, and they will admit
you. Come to my bureau down-stairs when you want it."
"Thank you."
She went in to her patient, who was tranquilly unconscious
of the tragedy, and told him she was going out. Then, exchanging her indoor for an outdoor veil, she set forth duly furnished with an order for admittance from the landlord. It was
a lovely morning, the sunlight sparkling on a thousand ripples
over the sea, the clear blue headlands standing out distinct and
fair along the coast, Bordighera and San Remo and all the
Italian coast on the one hand, and on the other the white
gleam of fair, foul, Circe-like Monte Carlo, like some vile, beauteous traitress, laughing beneath the warmth of the sun.
"What a beautiful world God has made, and how man has
destroyed it!" she thought to herself, as we all have thought
when we gaze on the loveliness of earth and sea and sky which
men call "the Riviera." Even Sister Gabrielle-though she was
a somewhat prosaic little soul-felt uplifted for a moment into
a feeling of that delight in living, that contentment in the mere
sense of existence, which so seldom visits the inhabitants of any
duller clime, and which one pictures to one's self as the true keynote of human joy in the old Greek times. And this all-pervading beauty and entrancement of nature in early summer
helped to bring a sharp, painful shock to her mind as she
crossed the threshold of the darkened house indicated in her
paper of directions, and knew herself in the presence of death.
"You knew the povera donna?" questioned the gaunt, black
[Mar.,
838