"No, Ernestine," replied the duchess, gently. "I blame you only for one thing, and that is for grieving M. de Maillefort by telling him of misfortunes which he cannot remedy."
"But why may he not be able to remedy them?" retorted Ernestine. "You do not know him. You do not know the great influence he exerts in the world,—how much noble-hearted people love and admire him, and how abjectly afraid cowards and evil-doers are of him. And, then, he is so good, so kind to all who are in trouble; he loved my mother so dearly!"
And as M. de Maillefort, overwhelmed with emotion, averted his face to conceal his tears, Mlle. de Beaumesnil continued, in even more beseeching tones:
"Oh, is it not true that you feel all a father's solicitude for us, M. de Maillefort? Are we not sisters in your eyes, and in the tenderness and attachment we feel for you? Oh, do not, I beseech you, in mercy, do not desert us!"
And Ernestine seized one of the hunchback's hands, while Herminie, involuntarily following her friend's example, possessed herself of the other, saying, in entreating tones:
"Ah, M. de Maillefort, you are our only hope!"
The hunchback was deeply affected. One of these young girls was the child of a woman he had loved devotedly, though secretly, for years.
The other, too, was, perhaps, her child, for very frequently the conviction that Herminie was Madame de Beaumesnil's daughter returned.
But however that might be, M. de Maillefort had received from this dying mother the sacred trust of watching over and protecting Ernestine and Herminie. He had sworn to fulfil this trust, and, unable to make even a pretence of concealing his emotion any longer, he clasped both the young girls passionately to his breast, and, in a voice broken with sobs, exclaimed:
"Yes, yes, my poor, dear children. I will do all the most loving of fathers could do for you!"