'I have come back to see Rose,' François on his side declared, 'and I repeat that I would have been here the very next day if I had not remained ignorant of everything.'
'Very good,' Thérèse rejoined; 'I do not prevent you from seeing your daughter; she is there—you may go in.'
There ensued a very singular scene which Marc watched with impassioned interest. Rose was seated in an armchair, reading, her injured arm hanging in a sling. As the door opened she looked up and raised a quivering cry, instinct, it seemed, both with fear and with joy.
'Oh! papa!'
Then she rose, and all at once seemed stupefied. 'But it wasn't you, papa—was it—the other evening?' she cried. 'The man was shorter and his beard was different!'
And she continued to scrutinise her father as if she found him otherwise than she had pictured him since his flight—since she had watched her forsaken mother weeping. Had she pictured him as a wicked man, then, squat of build and with an ogre's face? She now recognised the father with the pleasant smile, whom she adored; and if he had come back it was surely in order that no more tears might be shed in their dear home. But all at once she began to tremble at the thought of the dreadful consequences of her error.
'And to think I accused you, papa—that I kept on saying that the man was you! No, no, it wasn't you, I told a story; I will explain it to the gendarmes if they come to take you!'
She sank back in the arm-chair, weeping bitterly, and her father had to take her on his lap, kiss her, and vow to her that their sorrows were all over. He himself stammered with emotion as he spoke. Had he behaved so vilely, then, that he had appeared a very monster in the eyes of his daughter, and that she had thought him capable of ill-using her so dreadfully?
Thérèse, meantime, while listening, had striven to remain impassive, saying never a word. François glanced at her anxiously, as if to ascertain whether she would again tolerate his presence in that home which he had ravaged. And Marc, noticing the severity of her demeanour, her unwillingness to forgive, preferred to take his grandson away with him and provide him with a lodging pending the advent of a calmer hour.