CHAPTER XXIV AFTER THE STORM I It was close upon midnight when Fernande made her way to Madame la Marquise's boudoir. She found her there, on her knees still, her hands folded and stretched out over the window-sill, her head buried in her arms. The rain was coming down in torrents. Fernande herself, on her way home, had been drenched to the skin. But this was not the time to think of wet and cold, of health or of prudence. She had thrown down her cloak in the hall and at once went up to her aunt's room. The boudoir was dark, only from the next room there came the feeble rays of reflected light from the lamp. With a cry of burning anxiety Fernande ran to Madame. Denise de Mortain had knelt before the open window ever since her son's flying footsteps had ceased to resound through the chateau; she had knelt here absolutely prostrate with grief, her heart tortured with the desire to see her beloved son killed rather than openly disgraced. Fernande, as she bent over her, could feel that her arms and shoulders, her hands and her hair were soaked through. With gentle words and persuasive strength she tried to drag her away from the window. "_Ma tante_," she said appealingly, "it is I--Fernande. Won't you speak to me?" She felt a shiver going right through Denise's kneeling form; she racked her brain in wonderment as to what had caused this utter moral collapse in a woman who was always so full of indomitable energy. "_Ma tante!_" she reiterated more firmly, "I pray you listen to me. There is something which I must tell you now--at once." She managed gradually to raise Madame up in her own strong young arms, and to lead her to a chair close by. Denise was only half conscious. She sat in the chair, with her head rolling from left to right against its back, her eyes closed, her hands inert. Fernande ran into the bedroom. She brought in the lamp and a towel, and she dried Madame's face and hands and wiped the moisture from her dress and hair. Then she took the cold, numb hands in hers and began chafing them, rubbing the fingers, trying to infuse life into them with her warm breath. After a while consciousness began to return. The head ceased its weird rolling, and lay quite still against the back of the chair. A certain degree of warmth communicated itself to the fingers and an occasional tremor shook the pain-wearied frame. Then Madame la Marquise opened her eyes. For a moment or two she looked round her dazed, and still held in the arms of semi-consciousness. She looked straight into the lamp, and the pupils of her eyes slowly contracted until they appeared like small pin-points, with the iris round them steely and pale. Then her gaze fastened itself on Fernande--first on the hem of her gown, wet and muddy after the long tramp through the rain; then it wandered up by degrees to the girl's slender, white hands, with the delicate fingers interlaced and the diamond ring--Laurent's gift--gleaming in the lamplight.