There followed three days of pitiful anxiety for Coquenil. His mother's health was feeble at the best, and the shock of this catastrophe, the sudden awakening in the night to find flames roaring about her, the difficult rescue, and the destruction of her peaceful home, all this was very serious for the old lady; indeed, there were twenty-four hours during which the village doctor could offer small comfort to the distracted son.
Madam Coquenil, however, never wavered in her sweet faith that all was well. She was comfortable now in the home of a hospitable neighbor and declared she would soon be on her feet again. It was this faith that saved her, vowed Ernestine, her devoted companion; but the doctor laughed and said it was the presence of M. Paul.
At any rate, within the week all danger was past and Coquenil observed uneasily that, along with her strength and gay humor, his mother was rapidly recovering her faculty of asking embarrassing questions and of understanding things that had not been told her. In the matter of keen intuitions it was like mother like son.
So, delay as he would and evade as he would, the truth had finally to be told, the whole unqualified truth; he had given up this case that he had thought so important, he had abandoned a fight that he had called the greatest of his life.
"Why have you done it, my boy?" the old lady asked him gently, her searching eyes fixed gravely on him. "Tell me—tell me everything."
And he did as she bade him, just as he used to when he was little; he told her all that had happened from the crime to the capture, then of the assassin's release and his own baffling failure at the very moment of success.
His mother listened with absorbed interest, she thrilled, she radiated, she sympathized; and she shivered at the thought of such power for evil.
When he had finished, she lay silent, thinking it all over, not wishing to speak hastily, while Paul stroked her white hand.
"And the young man?" she asked presently. "The one who is innocent? What about him?"
"He is in prison, he will be tried."