He remembered that he had asked his wife at the Jandidier ball why she did not wear her diamonds; and she had replied with a smile:
“Oh! what is the use? Everybody knows them so well; and, besides, they don’t suit my costume.”
Yes, she had made the answer without blushing, without showing the slightest sign of agitation or shame.
What hardened impudence! What base hypocrisy concealed beneath an innocent, confiding manner!
And she had been thus deceiving him for twenty years! But suddenly a gleam of hope penetrated his confused mind—slight, barely possible; still a straw to cling to:
“Perhaps Valentine has put her diamonds in Madeleine’s room.”
Without stopping to consider the indelicacy of what he was about to do, he hurried into the young girl’s room, and pulled open one drawer after another. What did he find?
Not Mme. Fauvel’s diamonds; but Madeleine’s seven or eight boxes also empty.
Great heavens! Was this gentle girl, whom he had treated as a daughter, an accomplice in this deed of shame? Had she contributed her jewelry to add to the disgrace of the roof that sheltered her?
This last blow was almost too much for the miserable man. He sank almost lifeless into a chair, and wringing his hands, groaned over the wreck of his happiness. Was this the happy future to which he had looked forward? Was the fabric of his honor, well-being, and domestic bliss, to be dashed to the earth and forever lost in a day? Were his twenty years’ labor and high-standing to end thus in shame and sorrow?