"And they have killed her."
"Oh!—no, no—you rave—this cannot be. You know not, no, you know not how frightful this is. Sarah! compose yourself; speak to me tranquilly. Seat yourself—calm yourself. Often there are appearances—resemblances which deceive; one is inclined to believe what one desires. It is not a reproach I make you; but explain to me well—tell me all the reasons you have to credit this, for it cannot be—no, no; it must not be!—it is not so!"
After a moment's pause, the countess collected her thoughts, and said to Rudolph in an expiring voice, "Hearing of your marriage, thinking to be married myself, I could not keep our daughter with me; she was then four years old."
"But at this epoch I asked you for her with prayers," cried Rudolph, in a heartrending tone, "and my letters remained unanswered. The only one you wrote me announced her death."
"I wished to avenge myself for your contempt by refusing you your child. That was unworthy; but listen to me: I feel it—my life is drawing to a close; this last blow has overwhelmed me."
"No, no! I do not believe you—I do not wish to believe you! La Goualeuse my child! Oh, you would not have this so!"
"Listen to me, I say. When she was four years old my brother commissioned Madame Séraphin, widow of one of his old servants, to bring up the child until she was old enough to be placed at school. The sum destined for her future support was placed by my brother with a notary renowned for his probity. The letters of this man, and of Madame Séraphin, addressed at this period to me and my brother, are there, in that casket. At the end of a year they wrote me that the health of my child failed; eight months after, that she was dead; and they sent me the official notification of her decease. At this time, Madame Séraphin entered the service of Jacques Ferrand, after having delivered our child to La Chouette by the hands of a wretch now in the galleys at Rochefort. I began to write this confession of La Chouette when she wounded me. This paper is there, with a portrait of our daughter at the age of four years. Examine all—letters, confessions, portrait—and you, who have seen her—this unfortunate child—judge."
At these words, which exhausted her strength, Sarah fell back almost lifeless in her chair. Rudolph was thunderstruck at this revelation. There are some misfortunes so unlooked for, so horrible, that we are unwilling to believe them until compelled by overwhelming evidence. Rudolph, persuaded of the death of Fleur-de-Marie, had but one hope left, which was to convince himself that she was not his child. With a frightful calmness, which alarmed Sarah, he approached the table, opened the casket, and fell to reading the letters one by one, and examining, with scrupulous attention, the papers which accompanied them. These letters, stamped at the post-office, written to Sarah and her brother by the notary and by Madame Séraphin, related to the childhood of Fleur-de-Marie, and to the investment of the funds destined for her support. Rudolph could not doubt the authenticity of this correspondence. The confession of La Chouette was confirmed by the information obtained (of which we have spoken at the commencement of this story) by order of Rudolph, which pointed out a man named Pierre Tournemine, a prisoner at Rochefort, as the man who had received Fleur-de-Marie from Madame Séraphin to deliver her to La Chouette—to La Chouette, whom the unfortunate child herself had recognized before Rudolph, at the tapis-franc of the Ogress. Rudolph could no longer doubt the identity of these persons and of the Goualeuse. The official notice concerning her death appeared in conformity to law; but Ferrand had himself acknowledged to Cecily that this forged notice had served for the spoliation of a considerable sum formerly settled as an annuity on the girl whom he had caused to be drowned by Nicholas Martial, by the Ravageurs' Island.
It was, then, with growing and alarming anguish that Rudolph acquired, in spite of himself, the terrible conviction that the Goualeuse was his daughter, and that she was dead. Unfortunately for him, all seemed to confirm this belief. Before condemning Jacques Ferrand on the proofs given by the notary himself to Cecily, the prince, his deep interest for the Goualeuse, having caused inquiries to be made at Asnières, had learned that, in fact, two women, one old and the other young, and dressed in a peasant's costume, had been drowned in going to Ravageurs' Island, and that rumor accused the Martials of this new crime. Here we must state that, in spite of the attention of Dr. Griffon, of the Count de Saint Rémy, and of La Louve, Fleur-de-Marie, for a long time in a desperate situation, had hardly become convalescent, and that her weakness, mental and physical, was such, that she had not been able up to this time to inform Madame George or Rudolph of her position. This concourse of circumstances could not leave the slightest hope to the prince. A last proof was reserved for him. At length he cast his eyes on the miniature, which he had almost feared to look at. The blow was frightful. In this infantine and charming face, already radiant with that divine beauty which belongs to the cherubim, he recognized in a striking manner the features of Fleur-de-Marie; her Grecian nose, her noble forehead, her little mouth; already slightly serious. For, said Madame Séraphin to Sarah, in one of her letters which Rudolph had just read, "The child asks always for its mother, and is very sad."
There were her large blue eyes, of a blue so pure and soft—the bluebell's blue, as La Chouette had said to Sarah on recognizing in this miniature the features of the unfortunate child whom she had persecuted, in her infancy, under the name of LaPegriotte, and as a young girl under the name of La Goualeuse.