6.09.2005

THE : DOOR

O P E N E D
"...and the Marquis de Montalt appeared." So this must be the chateau at the border of the forest he was having renovated. His proposal of marriage to Adeline is renewed, with the same ghoulish insistence on her assuming a title currently worn by his living wife: " 'To-morrow shall unite us, lovely Adeline; to-morrow you shall consent to become the Marchioness de Montalt. You will then return my love and'---'You must first deserve my esteem, my Lord.'

" 'I will--I do deserve it. Are you not now in my power, and do I not forbear to take advantage of your situation?' " Which is not much of a screen for his intentions. Much smoother comes the question: " 'Can you doubt the reality of that love, which, to obtain you, has urged me to risque your displeasure?'...He now led her, and she suffered him, to a seat near the banquet, at which he pressed her to partake of a variety of confectionaries, particularly of some liquors, of which he himself drank freely: Adeline accepted only of a peach."

In the end the Marquis is rebuffed and Adeline is led to a bed-chamber by a pair of handmaidens who remain "wholly insensible to her distress," answering her pleas only with repeated praises of the Marquis. How fortunate, then, that a window in this chamber's closet has been left unlocked, and that Adeline is able to make her escape, and that the long-lost Theodore should be waiting for her on the grounds of the chateau! Theodore too has his informers among the Marquis's staff, it seems, and has been tracking her ever since his dismissal from the abbey on the day he was to warn her of the Marquis's foul ambitions. Having learned that she was to be brought to the chateau, "I ordered a chaise to be in waiting, and with a design of scaling your window, and conducting you thence, I entered the garden at midnight." With Theodore's carriage waiting just outside the chateau wall, the way to Adeline's escape finally seems open. Or would seem, if we didn't have 200 pages of ROTF left go to.

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