“And what shall you say?”
“Say! To a wretch who has dared to lift his hand to me? You do not yet know me. I have, thank Heaven, more pride than that. I have just finished his letter, and have torn it into a thousand bits. I am curious to see his house, though, now that I am not there to keep all in order. He is evidently out of spirits, and perhaps he is not well, as he has been for two months at—what is the name of the place?” and she calmly drew from her pocket the letter which she said she had destroyed. “Ah, yes, it is at the springs of Royat that he has been. What nonsense! Those mineral springs have always been bad for him.”
Jack colored at her falsehood, but said not one word. All the evening she was busy, and seemed to have regained the courage and animation of her first days with her son. While at work she talked to herself. Suddenly she crossed the room to Jack.
“You are full of courage, my boy,” she said, kissing him.
He was occupied in watching all that was going on within his mother’s mind. “It is not I whom she kisses,” he said, shrewdly; and his suspicions were confirmed by a trifle that proved how completely the past had taken possession of the poor woman’s mind. She never ceased humming the words of a little song of D’Argenton’s, which the poet was in the habit of singing himself at the piano in the twilight. Over and over again she sang the refrain, and the words revived in Jack’s mind only sad and shameful memories. Ah, if he had dared, what words he would have said to the woman before him! But she was his mother; he loved her, and wished by his own respect to teach her to respect herself. He therefore kept strict guard over his lips. This first warning of coming danger, however, awoke in him all the jealous foreboding of a man who was about to be betrayed. He studied her way of saying good-bye to him when he left in the morning, and he analyzed her smile of greeting on his return. He could not watch her himself, nor could he confide to any other person the distrust with which she inspired him. He knew how often a woman surrounds the man whom she deceives in an atmosphere of tender attentions,—the manifestations of hidden remorse. Once, on his way home, he thought he saw Hirsch and Labassandre turning a distant corner.
“Has any one been here?” he said to the concierge; and by the way he was answered he saw that some plot was already organized against him. The Sunday after on his return from Etiolles he found his mother so completely absorbed in her book that she did not even hear him come in. He would not have noticed this, knowing her mania for romances, had not Ida made an attempt to conceal the book.
“You startled me,” she said, half pouting.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Nothing,—some nonsense. And how are our friends?” But as she spoke, a blush covered her face and glowed under her fine transparent skin. It was one of the peculiarities of this childish nature that she was at once prompt and unskilful in falsehood. Annoyed by his earnest gaze, she rose from her chair. “You wish to know what I am reading! Look, then.” He saw once more the glossy cover of the Review that he had read for the first time in the engine-room of the Cydnus; only it was thinner and smaller. Jack would not have opened it if the following title on the outer page had not met his eyes:—
THE PARTING.
A POEM.
By the Vicomte Amacry d’Abgenton.