第109章

I found strength to answer, "No; I am upset by having found you in tears.It is nothing."She believed me; she had just seen me overcome by her emotion; she kissed me tenderly, and I begged her to continue.She then told me that one day in the previous week a stranger, coming ostensibly from one of their friends in London, had asked to see my stepfather.He was ushered into the hall, and into her presence, and she guessed at once by the extraordinary agitation which M.

Termonde displayed that the man was Edmond.The two brothers went into my stepfather's private room, while my mother remained in the hall, half dead with anxiety and suspense, every now and then hearing the angry tones of their voices, but unable to distinguish any words.At length the brother came out, through the hall, and looked at her as he passed by with eyes that transfixed her with fear.

"And the same evening," she went on, "Jacques took to his bed.

Now, do you understand my despair? Ah, it is not our name that Icare for.I wear myself out with repeating, 'What has this to do with us? How can we be spattered by this mud?' It is his health, his precious health! The doctor says that every violent emotion is a dose of poison to him.Ah!" she cried, with a gesture of despair, "this man will kill him."To hear that cry, which once again revealed to me the depth of her passion for my stepfather, to hear it at this moment, and to think what I was thinking!

"You saw him?" I asked, hardly knowing what I said."Have I not told you that he passed by me, there?" and with terror depicted in her face, she showed me the place on the carpet.

"And you are sure that the man was his brother?""Jacques told me so in the evening; but I did not require that; Ishould have recognized him by the eyes.How strange it is! Those two brothers, so different; Jacques so refined, so distinguished, so noble-minded, and the other, a big, heavy, vulgar lout, common-looking, and a rascal--well, they have the same look in their eyes.""And under what name is he in Paris?"

"I do not know.I dare not speak of him any more.If he knew that I have told you this, with his ideas! But then, dear, you would have heard it at some time or other; and besides," she added with firmness, "I would have told you long ago about this wretched secret if I had dared! You are a man now, and you are not bound by this excessively scrupulous fraternal affection.Advise me, Andre;what is to be done?"

"I do not understand you."

"Yes, yes.There must be some means of informing the police and having this man arrested without its being talked of in the newspapers or elsewhere.Jacques would not do this, because the man is his brother; but if we were to act, you and I, on our own side? I have heard you say that you visit M.Massol, whom we knew at the time of our great misfortune; suppose I were to go to him and ask his advice? Ah! I must keep my husband alive--he must be saved! I love him too much!"Why was I seized with a panic at the idea that she might carry out this project, and apply to the former Judge of Instruction--I, who had not ventured to go to his house since my aunt's death for fear he should divine my suspicions merely by looking at me? What was it that I saw so clearly, that made me implore her to abandon her idea in the very name of the love she bore her husband?

"You will not do this," I said; "you have no right to do it.He would never forgive you, and he would have just cause; it would be betraying him.""Betraying him! It would be saving him!"

"And if his brother's arrest were to strike him a fresh blow? If you were to see him ill, more ill than ever, on account of what you had done?"I had used the only argument that could have convinced her.

Strange irony of fate! I calmed her, I persuaded her not to act--I, who had suddenly conceived the monstrous notion that the doer of the murderous deed, the docile instrument in my stepfather's hands, was this infamous brother--that Edmond Termonde and Rochdale were one and the same man!