“In fact, you reject my offers, because I do not explain them to you by any of the usual motives. But what can I tell you? Suppose I should say to you that I have a daughter who has secretly left me, so that I do not know what has become of her, and that her memory makes me anxious to serve you. May I not have said to myself, that perhaps she is struggling, just as you have done, with poverty; that she also has been abandoned by her lover?”
The poor girl turned deadly pale as he spoke thus, and interrupted him eagerly, raising herself on her pillows,—
“You are mistaken, sir. My position here may justify such suspicions, I know; but I have no lover.”
He replied,—
“I believe you; I swear I believe you. But, if that is so, how did you get here? and how were you reduced to such extreme suffering?”
At last Papa Ravinet had touched the right chord. The poor girl was deeply moved; and the tears started in her eyes. She said in a low voice,—
“There are secrets which cannot be revealed.”
“Not even when life and honor depend on them?”
“Yes.”
“But”—