Captivity: the First Day — The Three Musketeers

Milady sits where they left her, and for the first time she doubts and fears. Twice her fortune has failed, and twice she names the same fatal genius: D'Artagnan. He has deceived her in love, lifted the corner of her mask, and, she believes, written to Lord de Winter. The cardinal's blank paper is gone. A colonial prison waits. Hatred rises with the surf against the rocks. To be free she would need months to cut bars. She has ten or twelve days. At the glass she pays her debt of rage, then stops. Violence is a proof of weakness. She has never won that way against men. She must fight like a woman. Her strength is in her weakness. She tries every face from fury to the sweetest smile, sets her hair, and tells herself she is still beautiful.

Before she sleeps she means to study her jailers. She hears supper mentioned, throws herself into the armchair with her hair unbound, and faints on purpose. Felton has the table set and the sentinel relieved. He will not take a step toward her. He sends a soldier for Lord de Winter. She watches him for ten minutes through her lashes. He never turns. She sighs, sits up, and asks if she must stay alone. A woman of the neighbourhood will come tomorrow. De Winter arrives with salts, laughing. The corpse has come back to life. This is the first act of a comedy. Felton says he owed her the attention a man of gentle birth owes a woman, if not on her account then on his own. The words pass through her like ice. De Winter asks if the hair and the languishing look have seduced this heart of stone. Felton says it takes more than a woman's tricks to corrupt him. They go to supper. De Winter tells her the fowl is not poisoned; his cook is not his heir.

The door is barely shut when she seizes a knife from the table. The blade is round silver. De Winter comes back laughing. That knife was for Felton. If he had listened to the lieutenant, it would have been pointed steel, and Felton's throat would have been cut. Felton says, with disgust, that his lord was right and he was wrong. Alone, she thinks she is lost, then eats, drinks a little Spanish wine, and studies every word. One sentence returns: if I had listened to you. Felton had spoken for her. That spark of pity she will make a flame. De Winter knows her and is proof. Felton is young, ingenuous, and seems virtuous. There, she says, are means of destroying him. She sleeps with a smile, like a girl who dreams of a festival crown.