The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [263]
“Kill yourself?” Felton cried in terror, forgetting to withdraw his hands from the prisoner’s hands. “Kill yourself?”
“I have spoken, Monsieur,” murmured Milady, lowering her voice and letting herself fall limply to the floor, “I have told my secret! He knows everything, my God, I’m lost!”
Felton remained standing, motionless and undecided.
“He’s still doubtful,” thought Milady. “I haven’t been convincing enough.”
There was the sound of walking in the corridor. Milady recognized Lord de Winter’s footstep. Felton also recognized it and went to the door.
Milady jumped up.
“Oh, not a word!” she said, in a concentrated voice. “Not a word to this man of all I’ve said to you, or I’m lost, and it is you, you…”
Then, as the steps came closer, she fell silent for fear her voice would be heard, pressing her beautiful hand to Felton’s mouth in a gesture of infinite terror. Felton gently pushed Milady away, and she collapsed onto a chaise longue.
Lord de Winter passed before the door without stopping, and the sound of his footsteps could be heard going away.
Felton, pale as death, stood for a few moments with his ears strained and listening; then, when the noise died away entirely, he drew his breath like a man coming out of a dream and rushed from the apartment.
“Ah!” said Milady, listening in her turn to the sound of Felton’s footsteps, which went away in the opposite direction from those of Lord de Winter, “so you’re mine at last!”
Then her brow darkened.
“If he talks to the baron,” she said, “I’m lost, for the baron, who knows very well that I won’t kill myself, will set me before him with a knife in my hand, and he will see clearly that all this great despair was only playacting.”
She went and stood before her mirror, and looked at herself. Never had she been so beautiful.
“Oh, yes!” she said, smiling, “but he won’t talk to him!”
That evening, Lord de Winter accompanied the supper.
“Monsieur,” Milady said to him, “is your presence an obligatory accessory of my captivity? Might you not spare me the additional torture caused by your visits?”
“How now, dear sister?” said de Winter. “Did you not announce to me sentimentally, with that pretty mouth so cruel to me today, that you came to England for the sole purpose of seeing me at your ease—a pleasure of which, as you said to me, you felt the privation so sharply that you risked everything for it: seasickness, storms, captivity? Well, here I am, so be satisfied. Besides, this time there’s a motive for my visit.”
Milady shuddered. She thought that Felton had talked. Never in her life, perhaps, had this woman, who had experienced so many powerful and contrary emotions, felt her heart beat so violently.
She was sitting down. Lord de Winter took an armchair, drew it to her side, and sat down by her. Then, taking a paper from his pocket and slowly unfolding it, he said to her:
“Here, I wanted to show you this sort of passport, which I have drafted myself and which will serve you henceforth as an identification number in the life I consent to leave you with.”
Then, shifting his eyes from Milady to the paper, he read:
Order to convey to_____
“The name of the place is left blank,” de Winter broke off. “If you have some preference, indicate it to me, and provided it be a thousand leagues from London, your request will be granted. So I begin again:
Order to convey to_____one Charlotte Backson, branded by the justice of the kingdom of France, but liberated after punishment. She will remain in this place of residence without ever going more than three leagues from it. In case of attempted escape,