“The Lagors are very poor, and there has never been any member of the family named Raoul. Mme. Lagors had no son, only two daughters.”
This information dashed his last hope.
The banker thought, when he discovered his wife’s infamy, that she had sinned as deeply as a woman could sin; but he now saw that she had practised a system more shocking than the crime itself.
“Wretched creature!” he cried with anguish; “in order to see her lover constantly, she dared introduce him to me under the name of a nephew who never existed. She had the shameless courage to bring him beneath her husband’s roof, and seat him at my fireside, between my sons; and I, confiding fool that I was, welcomed the villain, and lent him money.”
Nothing could equal the pain of wounded pride and mortification which he suffered at the thought that Raoul and Mme. Fauvel had amused themselves with his good-natured credulity and obtuseness.
Nothing but death could wipe out an injury of this nature. But the very bitterness of his resentment enabled him to restrain himself until the time for punishment came. With grim satisfaction he promised himself that his acting would be as successful as theirs.
That day he succeeded in concealing his agitation, and kept up a flow of talk at dinner; but at about nine o’clock, when Clameran called on the ladies, he rushed from the house, for fear that he would be unable to control his indignation at the sight of this destroyer of his happiness; and did not return home until late in the night.
The next day he reaped the fruit of his prudence.
Among the letters which his valet brought him at noon, was one bearing the post-mark of Vesinet.
He carefully opened the envelope, and read: