Her whole pose was instinct with challenge, with defiance, and in that
moment I identified the illusive memory which the eyes of Madame so
often had conjured up in my mind.
Once, years before, I had seen a wounded tigress standing over her
cubs, a beautiful, fearless creature, blazing defiance with dying eyes
upon those who had destroyed her, the mother-instinct supreme to the
last; for as she fell to rise no more she had thrown her paw around the
cowering cubs. It was not in shape, nor in colour, but in expression
and in their stillness, that the eyes of Madame de Staemer resembled the
eyes of the tigress.
"Oh, Madame, Madame," moaned the girl, "how dare he!"
"Ah!" Madame de Staemer raised her head yet higher, a royal gesture,
that unmoving stare set upon the face of the discomfited Inspector
Aylesbury. "Leave my apartment." Her left hand shot out dramatically in
the direction of the door, but even yet the fingers remained curled.
"Stupid, gross fool!"
Inspector Aylesbury stood up, his face very flushed.
"I am only doing my duty, Madame," he said.
"Go, go!" commanded Madame, "I insist that you go!"
Convulsively she held Val Beverley to her side, and although I could
not see the girl's face, I knew that she was weeping.
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