"I believe so."
"Perhaps M. de la Vireville hopes to marry her in the end, if—as may so easily happen in these sad days—she should be suddenly left a widow?"
"No, Monseigneur, he would never do that. He has never forgiven her. But he will not look at another woman. I think it would make no difference to him if he were to hear of her death to-morrow. For him she has long been dead . . . and yet she is alive. Would God she were not! Her lover was killed by his side at Quiberon; he told me the other day." She paused a moment, looking into the distance, and resumed, with a little gesture: "Do not imagine, Monseigneur, that Fortuné is always thinking of this. He is not a dreamer; he has always been a man of action, and a reckless one at that. It is but a scar now, I think, not a wound—but it is a scar with poison in it. And over there in Jersey, when I saw him with the little boy . . ." She stopped, and the tears came into her eyes. "Monseigneur, I believe that in his heart of hearts Fortuné desires as much to have a son as I desire to see him with one."
"But," said the Bishop, "there is nothing to prevent his marrying some day, if he could cut himself loose from this memory. If he could so cut himself loose, the rest—you must pardon an old man, my daughter—the rest would not be difficult, would it?"
"Monseigneur, a man who will not look at women is always attractive to them."
The Bishop smiled. "I suppose that is true. Now would you be astounded to learn that, before you came, he used sometimes, in sleep or delirium, to repeat a woman's name? I suppose it was hers who betrayed him."
"I do not think that likely, Monseigneur," said Mme. de la Vireville. "He has not mentioned her name for years. And that it should have been any other woman's is impossible."
"Then perhaps my ears deceived me," replied the Bishop, looking as if he were pretty sure that they had not. "In that case I shall perhaps not be indiscreet if I tell you the name—admitting frankly that some of the context puzzled me. It was—'Anne.'"
It may be seen what bond of error united the old French Bishop and the middy of the Pomone.
Mme. de la Vireville clasped her little hands together. "But, Monseigneur, that exactly bears out what I said about his desiring a son. Anne is the name of the little boy I was referring to just now—Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny, his friend's son—the friend about whose fate, as Your Grandeur knows, Fortuné was anxious, but who proves, after all, to have been saved at Quiberon. Fortuné had promised the Marquis de Flavigny to look after the child if he—the Marquis—were killed."