“Cease your importunities,” she said, looking him steadily in the eye. “I have made up my mind irrevocably.”
“To what?”
“To do everything and anything to escape your shameful persecution. Oh! you need not smile. I shall throw myself at M. Fauvel’s feet, and confess everything. He is noble-hearted and generous, and, knowing how I have suffered, will forgive me.”
“Do you think so?” said Clameran derisively.
“You mean to say that he will be pitiless, and banish me from his roof. So be it; it will only be what I deserve. There is no torture that I cannot bear, after what I have suffered through you.”
This inconceivable resistance so upset all the marquis’s plans that he lost all constraint, and, dropping the mask of politeness, appeared in his true character.
“Indeed!” he said in a fierce, brutal tone, “so you have decided to confess to your loving, magnanimous husband! A famous idea! What a pity you did not think of it before; it is rather late to try it now. Confessing everything the first day I called on you, you might have been forgiven. Your husband might have pardoned a youthful fault atoned for by twenty years of irreproachable conduct; for none can deny that you have been a faithful wife and a good mother. But picture the indignation of your trusting husband when you tell him that this pretended nephew, whom you imposed upon his family circle, who sat at his table, who borrowed his money, is your illegitimate son! M. Fauvel is, no doubt, an excellent, kind-hearted man; but I scarcely think he will pardon a deception of this nature, which betrays such depravity, duplicity, and audacity.”
All that the angry marquis said was horribly true; yet Mme. Fauvel listened unflinchingly, as if the coarse cruelty of his words strengthened her resolution to have nothing more to do with him, but to throw herself on her husband’s mercy.
“Upon my soul,” he went on, “you must be very much infatuated with this M. Bertomy! Between the honor of your husband’s name, and pleasing this love-sick cashier, you refuse to hesitate. Well, I suppose he will console you. When M. Fauvel divorces you, and Abel and Lucien avert their faces at your approach, and blush at being your sons, you will be able to say, ‘I have made Prosper happy!’”
“Happen what may, I shall do what is right,” said Mme. Fauvel.