He stopped. There was something in Jean’s face which told him that silence was better than speech at this moment. The first words of Jean convinced him of it.
“You are a villain,” said he, “and the punishment of your villainy shall be a confession. I hope to marry Elise Lepage,” he went on, raising his hand for silence as he saw his brother about to protest, “and I do not intend she shall waste her life in useless regrets over the loss of one so unworthy as yourself. Come, then, and in her presence, if not in that of her father, proclaim yourself the criminal that you are or—”
“Or what?” asked the other, with a wild gleam, half of defiance, half of fear.
“Or I keep my ten thousand francs and leave you to the tender mercies of a man whose justice, you have reason to know, is stronger than his mercy.”
A cold sweat broke out on Camille’s face. He looked at his brother with great staring eyes as if he could hardly believe in the alternative that was offered him. Seeing it, Jean continued:
“It is three years since the day I first awoke to the knowledge that I had for my brother a man who had provoked the justice of the law, and only escaped by the ignorance or blindness of those he had defrauded. In those three years I have spared nothing, either in the way of money or effort, to give you what you wanted and save you, if possible, from the repetition of your dastardly crime. How have you repaid me? By stealing the fancy of the woman I loved, or,” as Camille faintly objected, “the fancy of a girl whom you knew I respected, and whom you also knew would never have given you her regard had she known your real character or suspected the shadow that hung above you. She thinks you true, you say, and trusts you. That means she will remember you lovingly in your absence, possibly wait for your return, when return you never will. Elise is too fine a girl to be thus sacrificed,” asserted Jean, “and if I did not love her I should still say, ‘Come below, and show yourself to her for what you are.’ Better she should suffer this one shock, that in itself carries healing, than linger on for years a prey to a pain of longing that will be none the less keen because it will be so bravely hidden.”
But Camille had sunk before this prospect.
“I cannot,” he murmured, “I would rather go to the galleys.”
Meantime, in her own little room below, Elise was bitterly weeping. She had loved Camille almost unconsciously. Not till she saw him about to leave her did she realize how deeply he had entered into her dreams and hopes. Then the mystery of his departure heightened its effect. Though the ready tale he told of the fine position which had been offered him in a mercantile house in Peru was plausible enough, there was something in his manner and the fact that he wished to carry her away with him secretly that struck an icy doubt to her heart, and, devoted as she was to him, she felt as if she would give all the world, were it hers, to throw herself into her father’s arms and ask him for his sympathy and counsel. But that was expressly forbidden. Her father must know nothing of her sorrow or her love; her wilful lover would not have it. And young as she was, innocent as her thoughts were of wrong or deception, there was something in this ban laid between her and the father she so idolized, that awakened strange doubts and fears in her otherwise trusting bosom.