"Then you must feel, my dear child, that you owe me your entire confidence. Madame de Beaumesnil had no more devoted friend than myself,—and it was upon the strength of this friendship of more than thirty years' standing, that she felt she could rely upon me sufficiently to entrust me with a sacred mission."
"Can he mean that my mother confided the secret of my birth to him?" thought Herminie.
The marquis, noticing Herminie's increasing agitation, and confident that he had at last found Madame de Beaumesnil's illegitimate daughter, continued:
"The letter you wrote for Madame de Beaumesnil requested me to come to her even at that late hour of the night. You remember this fact, do you not?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"I obeyed the summons as soon as I received it. The countess felt that her end was fast approaching," continued the hunchback, in a voice that trembled with suppressed emotion. "After commending her daughter Ernestine to my care, Madame de Beaumesnil implored me to—to do her a last service. She entreated me to—to divide my care and interest between her daughter and—and another young girl no less dear to her—"
"He knows all," Herminie said to herself, with a sinking heart. "My poor mother's sin is no secret to him."
"This other young girl," continued the hunchback, more and more overcome, "was an angel, the countess told me. Yes, those were her very words,—an angel of virtue and courage, a brave and noble-hearted girl," added the marquis, his eyes wet with tears. "A poor, lonely orphan, who, though destitute alike of friends and resources, had struggled bravely on against a most adverse fate. Ah, if you could have heard the accents of despairing tenderness in which that most unhappy woman and unfortunate mother spoke of that young girl; for I divined—though she made no such admission, deterred, doubtless, by the shame of such an avowal—that only a mother could speak thus and suffer thus on thinking of her daughter's fate. No, no, it was not a stranger that the countess commended to my care with so much earnestness on her death-bed."
The marquis, overcome by emotion, paused an instant and wiped his tear-dimmed eyes.
"Oh, my mother," Herminie said to herself, making a brave effort at self-control, "then your last thoughts were indeed of your unhappy daughter!"