"At first," went on M. de Tregars, "I could hardly believe what I read. I hastened to come; and the first shopkeeper I questioned confirmed only too well what I had seen in the papers. From that moment, I had but one wish, - to see and speak to you. When I reached the door, I recognized M. Costeclar's equipage, and I had a presentiment of the truth. I inquired from the concierge for your mother or your brother, and heard that Maxence had gone out a few moments before, and that Mme. Favoral had just left in a carriage with M. Chapelain, the old lawyer. At the idea that you were alone with Costeclar, I hesitated no longer. I ran up stairs, and, finding the door open, had no occasion to ring."
Mlle. Gilberte could hardly repress the sobs that rose to her throat.
"I never hoped to see you again," she stammered; "and you'll find there on the table the letter I had just commenced for you when M.
Costeclar interrupted me."
M. de Tregars took it up quickly. Two lines only were written. He read: "I release you from your engagement, Marius. Henceforth you are free."
He became whiter than his shirt.
"You wish to release me from my engagement!" he exclaimed. "You -"
"Is it not my duty? Ah! if it had only been our fortune, I should perhaps have rejoiced to lose it. I know your heart. Poverty would have brought us nearer together. But it's honor, Marius, honor that is lost too! The name I bear is forever stained. Whether my father is caught, or whether he escapes, he will be tried all the same, condemned, and sentenced to a degrading penalty for embezzlement and forgery."
If M. de Tregars was allowing her to proceed thus, it was because he felt all his thoughts whirling in his brain; because she looked so beautiful thus, all in tears, and her hair loose; because there arose from her person so subtle a charm, that words failed him to express the sensations that agitated him.
"Can you," she went on, "take for your wife the daughter of a dishonored man? No, you cannot. Forgive me, then, for having for a moment turned away your life from its object; forgive the sorrow which I have caused you; leave me to the misery of my fate; forget me!"
She was suffocating.
"Ah, you have never loved me!" exclaimed Marius.
Raising her hands to heaven, "Thou hearest him, great God!" she uttered, as if shocked by a blasphemy.
"Would it be easy for you to forget me then? Were I to be struck by misfortune, would you break our engagement, cease to love me?"
She ventured to take his hands, and, pressing them between hers, "To cease loving you no longer depends on my will," she murmured with quivering lips. "Poor, abandoned of all, disgraced, criminal even, I should love you still and always."
With a passionate gesture, Marius threw his arm around her waist, and, drawing her to his breast, covered her blonde hair with burning kisses.
"Well, 'tis thus that I love you too!" he exclaimed, "and with all my soul, exclusively, and for life! What do I care for your parents? Do I know them? Your father - does he exist? Your name - it is mine, the spotless name of the Tregars. You are my wife! mine, mine!"
She was struggling feebly: an almost invincible stupor was creeping over her. She felt her reason disturbed, her energy giving way, a film before her eyes, the air failing to her heaving chest.
A great effort o er will restored her to consciousness. She withdrew gently, and sank upon a chair, less strong against joy than s had been against sorrow.
"Pardon me," she stammered, "pardon me for having doubted you!"
M. de Tregars was not much less agitated than Mlle. Gilberte: but he was a man; and the springs of his energy were of a superior temper.
In less than a minute he had fully recovered his self-possession and imposed upon his features their accustomed expression. Drawing a chair by the side of Mlle. Gilberte, "Permit me, my friend," he said, "to remind you that our moments are numbered, and that there are many details which it is urgent that I should know."
"What details?" she asked, raising her head.
"About your father."
She looked at him with an air of profound surprise.
"Do you not know more about it than I do?" she replied, "more than my mother, more than any of us? Did you not, whilst following up the people who robbed your father, strike mine unwittingly? And 'tis I, wretch that I am, who inspired you to that fatal resolution; and I have not the heart to regret it."
M. de Tregars had blushed imperceptibly. "How did you know?" he began.
"Was it not said that you were about to marry Mlle. de Thaller?"
He drew up suddenly.
"Never," he exclaimed, "has this marriage existed, except in the brain of M. de Thaller, and, more still, of the Baroness de Thaller.
That ridiculous idea occurred to her because she likes my name, and would be delighted to see her daughter Marquise de Tregars. She has never breathed a word of it to me; but she has spoken of it everywhere, with just enough secrecy to give rise to a good piece of parlor gossip. She went so far as to confide to several persons of my acquaintance the amount of the dowry, thinking thus to encourage me. As far as I could, I warned you against this false news through the Signor Gismondo."
"The Signor Gismondo relieved me of cruel anxieties," she replied;
"but I had suspected the truth from the first. Was I not the confidante of your hopes? Did I not know your projects? I had taken for granted that all this talk about a marriage was but a means to advance yourself in M. de Thaller's intimacy without awaking his suspicions."
M. de Tregars was not the man to deny a true fact.
"Perhaps, indeed, I have not been wholly foreign to M. Favoral's disaster. At least I may have hastened it a few months, a few days only, perhaps; for it was inevitable, fatal. Nevertheless, had I suspected the real facts, I would have given up my designs - Gilberte, I swear it - rather than risk injuring your father.
There is no undoing what is done; but the evil may, perhaps, be somewhat lessened."
Mlle. Gilberte started.
"Great heavens!" she exclaimed, "do you, then, believe my father innocent?"