He explained everything to her in the working-room. Hubertine had just taken off her hat and gloves, and he at once told her of his having found the child on the floor in a dead faint, that she was now sleeping on her bed, overcome with weakness, and almost lifeless.
“We have really been greatly mistaken. She thinks constantly of this young man, and it is killing her by inches. Ah! if you knew what a shock it gave me, and the remorse which has made me almost distracted, since I have realised the truth of the case, and carried her upstairs in so pitiable a state. It is our fault. We have separated them by falsehoods, and I am not only ashamed, but so angry with myself it makes me ill. But what? Will you let her suffer so, without saying anything to save her?”
Still Hubertine was as silent as Angelique, and, pale from anxiety, looked at him calmly and soothingly. But he, always an excitable man, was now so overcome by what he had just seen that, forgetting his usual submission, he was almost beside himself, could not keep still, but threw his hands up and down in his feverish agitation.
“Very well, then! I will speak, and I will tell her that Felicien loves her, and that it is we who have had the cruelty to prevent him from returning, in deceiving him also. Now, every tear she sheds cuts me to the heart. Were she to die, I should consider myself as having been her murderer. I wish her to be happy. Yes! happy at any cost, no matter how, but by all possible means.”
He had approached his wife, and he dared to cry out in the revolt of his tenderness, being doubly irritated by the sad silence she still maintained.
“Since they love each other, it is they alone who should be masters of the situation. There is surely nothing in the world greater than to love and be loved. Yes, happiness is always legitimate.”
At length Hubertine, standing motionless, spoke slowly:
“You are willing, then, that he should take her from us, are you not? That he should marry her notwithstanding our opposition, and without the consent of his father? Would you advise them to do so? Do you think that they would be happy afterwards, and that love would suffice them?”
And without changing her manner she continued in the same heart-broken voice:
“On my way home I passed by the cemetery, and an undefinable hope made me enter there again. I knelt once more on the spot that is worn by our knees, and I prayed there for a long time.”