Where had Madame Ferailleur learned these particulars? Pascal asked himself this question without being able to answer it. “I don’t understand you, mother,” he faltered.
“Then you know nothing of Mademoiselle Marguerite’s past life. Is it possible she never told you anything about it?”
“I only know that she has been very unhappy.”
“Has she never alluded to the time when she was an apprentice?”
“She has only told me that she earned her living with her own hands at one time of her life.”
“Well, I am better informed on the subject.”
Pascal’s amazement was changed to terror. “You, mother, you!”
“Yes; I—I have been to the asylum where she was received and educated. I have had a conversation with two Sisters of Charity who remember her, and it is scarcely an hour since I left the people to whom she was formerly bound as an apprentice.”
Standing opposite his mother with one hand convulsively clutching the back of the chair he was leaning on, Pascal tried to nerve himself for some terrible blow. For was not his life at stake? Did not his whole future depend upon the revelations Madame Ferailleur was about to make? “So this was your object in going out, mother?” he faltered.
“Yes.”