"You here!" cried he, turning pale as death. "O Helen! dear rash friend! why are you in Paris? Speak."
Here he paused, trembling with emotion. I was little less affected; but, making a great effort, I faltered out, "My husband is prisoner here, and I am going to him."
De Walden clasped his hands together and was silent; but his look declared the agony of his mind.
Benoit now came to conduct me in; and De Walden, taking Juan's arm, led him apart.
"Have you told him I am here?" said I, turning very faint, alarmed now the moment was come which I had so delightedly anticipated.
"No: I have told him nothing."
He now put the key into a door at the bottom of a long, narrow, dark passage, and it turned on its heavy and grating hinges.
"Some one desires to see you," said Benoit gruffly, to hide his kind emotion; and I stood before my long estranged husband. But where was the look of gladness? where the tone of welcome, though it might be mingled with that of less pleasant sensations? He started, turned pale, pressed forward to meet me; but then exclaiming in a faltering voice, "Is it you, Helen? Rash girl! why do I see you here?" he sunk upon his miserable bed, and hid his face from me. I stood, pale, motionless, and silent as a statue. Was this the scene which I had painted to myself? True, I should have been shocked, if he had approached me with extended arms, and as if he felt that I had nothing to forget: yet I did expect that his eye would lighten up with joyful surprise, and his quivering lip betray the tenderness which he would but dared not express. However, for the first time in my life, indignation and a sense of injury were stronger than my fond woman's feeling; and I seated myself in silence on the only chair in the room, with my proud heart swelling as if it would burst its bounds and give me ease for ever.
"Helen!" said he at length in a subdued and dejected tone, "your presence here distracts me. This scene, this city, are no places for you; and oh! how unworthy am I of this exertion of love! What! must a wretch like me expose to danger such an exalted creature as this is?"
These flattering words, though uttered from the head more than from the heart, were a sort of balm to my wounded feelings; but I coldly replied, "That in coming to Paris, in order to be on the spot if any danger happened to him, I had only done what I considered as the duty of a wife; and that now my earnest wish was to be allowed to spend part, if not the whole of every day with him in prison, as his friend and soother."