It might, indeed, be cruel to rob
her of Elise, the last living link that bound her to the blessed
memories of her childhood, and he only mildly strove to point out to
her how oddly, yet persistently, her good name had suffered through
the words and deeds of this flighty, melodramatic Frenchwoman.
Something of her baleful influence he had seen and suspected before
ever they came to their exile, but here at Sandy, with full force he
realized the extent of her machinations. Clarice was not the woman to
go prowling about the quarters in the dead hours of the night, no
matter how nervous and sleepless at home. Clarice was not the woman to
be having back-door conferences with the servants of other households,
much less the "striker" of an officer with whose name hers, as a
maiden, had once been linked. He recalled with a shudder the events of
the night that sent the soldier Mullins to hospital, robbed of his
wits, if not of his life. He recalled with dread the reluctant
admissions of the doctor and of Captain Wren. Sleep-walking, indeed!
Clarice never elsewhere at any time had shown somnambulistic symptoms.
It was Elise beyond doubt who had lured her forth for some purpose he
could neither foil nor fathom. It was Elise who kept up this
discreditable and mysterious commerce with Downs,--something that had
culminated in the burning of Blakely's home, with who knows what
evidence,--something that had terminated only with Downs's mad
desertion and probable death.
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