Suddenly the woman rose in a fit of anger.
“Don’t cry, dear,” said she to Jack, as she would have spoken to her little child; “I am going for your mother.”
Jack understood what she said, understood that she had gone, but still continued to repeat, in a harsh voice, the words, “She will not come! she will not come!”
The sister tried to soothe him. “Calm yourself, my child.”
Then Jack rose in a sort of delirium. “I tell you she will not come. You do not know her, she is a heartless mother; all the misery of my miserable life has come from her! My heart is one huge wound, from the gashes she has cut in it. When he pretended to be ill, she went to him on wings, and would never again leave him; and I am dying, and she refuses to come to me. What a cruel mother! it is she who has killed me, and she does not wish to see me die!”
Exhausted by this effort, Jack let his head fall back on the pillow, and the sister bent over him in gentle pity, while the brief winter’s day ended in a yellow twilight and occasional gusts of snow.
Charlotte and D’Argenton descended from their carriage. They had just returned from a fashionable concert, and were carefully dressed in velvet and furs, light gloves and laces. She was in the best of spirits. Remember that she had just shown herself in public with her poet, and had shown herself, too, to be as pretty as she was ten years before. The complexion was heightened by the sharp wintry air, and the soft wraps in which she was enveloped added to her beauty as does the satin and quilted lining of a casket enhance the brilliancy of the gems within. Â woman of the people stood on the sidewalk, and rushed forward on seeing her.
“Madame, madame! come at once!”
“Madame Bélisaire!” cried Charlotte, turning pale.
“Your child is very ill; he asks for you!”