“Speak, monsieur,” interrupted Marguerite. “I will answer your questions frankly, or else not answer them at all.”
“To resume, then,” said he, “I am told that M. de Chalusse has no relatives, near or remote. Is this the truth?”
“So far as I know—yes, monsieur. Still, I have heard it said that a sister of his, Mademoiselle Hermine de Chalusse, abandoned her home twenty-five or thirty years ago, when she was about my age, and that she has never received her share of the enormous fortune left by her parents.”
“And has this sister never given any sign of life?”
“Never! Still, monsieur, I have promised you to be perfectly frank. That letter which the Count de Chalusse received yesterday, that letter which I regard as the cause of his death—well, I have a presentiment that it came from his sister. It could only have been written by her or—by that other person whose letters—and souvenirs—you found in the escritoire.”
“And—this other person—who can she be?” As the young girl made no reply, the magistrate did not insist, but continued: “And you, my child, who are you?”
She made a gesture of sorrowful resignation, and then, in a voice faltering with emotion, she answered: “I do not know, monsieur. Perhaps I am the count’s daughter. I should be telling an untruth if I said that was not my belief. Yes, I believe it, but I have never been certain of it. Sometimes I have believed, sometimes I have doubted it. On certain days I have said to myself, ‘Yes, it must be so!’ and I have longed to throw my arms around his neck. But at other times I have exclaimed: ‘No, it isn’t possible!’ and I have almost hated him. Besides, he never said a word on the subject—never a decisive word, at least. When I saw him for the first time, six years ago, I judged by the manner in which he forbade me to call him ‘father,’ that he would never answer any question I might ask on the subject.”
If there was a man in the world inaccessible to idle curiosity, it was certainly this magistrate, whose profession condemned him to listen every day to family grievances, neighborly quarrels, complaints, accusations, and slander. And yet as he listened to Mademoiselle Marguerite, he experienced that strange disquietude which seizes hold of a person when a puzzling problem is presented. “Allow me to believe that many decisive proofs may have escaped your notice on account of your inexperience,” he said.
But interrupting him with a gesture, she sadly remarked: “You are mistaken; I am not inexperienced.”
He could not help smiling at what he considered her self-conceit. “Poor child!” said he; “how old are you? Eighteen?”