"Pooh, my dear child, your father is an old friend of my poor husband, and a near relation too! But, Gabriel, mon petit ange, you had better not say at home that you have seen this picture; Madame Dalibard might be foolish enough to be angry."
"To be sure not. I have kept a secret before now!" and again the boy's cheek grew pale, and he looked hurriedly round.
"And you are very fond of Madame Dalibard too; so you must not vex her."
"Who says I'm fond of Madame Dalibard? A stepmother!"
"Why, your father, of course,—il est si bon, ce pauvre Dalibard; and all men like cheerful faces. But then, poor lady,—an Englishwoman, so strange here; very natural she should fret, and with bad health, too."
"Bad health! Ah, I remember! She, also, does not seem likely to live long!"
"So your poor father apprehends. Well, well; how uncertain life is! Who would have thought dear Bellanger would have—"
Gabriel rose hastily, and interrupted the widow's pathetic reflections.
"I only ran in to say Bon jour. I must leave you now."
"Adieu, my dear boy,—not a word on the miniature! By the by, here's a shirt-pin for you,—tu es joli comme un amour."
All was clear now to Gabriel; it was necessary to get rid of him, and forever. Dalibard might dread his attachment to Lucretia,—he would dread still more his closer intimacy with the widow of Bellanger, should that widow wed again, and Dalibard, freed like her (by what means?), be her choice! Into that abyss of wickedness, fathomless to the innocent, the young villanous eye plunged, and surveyed the ground; a terror seized on him,—a terror of life and death. Would Dalibard spare even his own son, if that son had the power to injure? This mission, was it exile only,—only a fall back to the old squalor of his uncle's studio; only the laying aside of a useless tool? Or was it a snare to the grave? Demon as Dalibard was, doubtless the boy wronged him. But guilt construes guilt for the worst.