"Down on our knees before your father! Let us weep over the dead on our knees, Nominoë!" said Mademoiselle Plouernel, throwing her mask far away. "Let us weep for the ill-starred Tina."
And pale, her face in tears, overwhelmed with grief and almost fainting, she fell down, like Nominoë, upon her knees before Salaun, while Serdan, jumping back a step, cried out:
"Mademoiselle Plouernel! In this place!"
Salaun, recognizing, as Serdan had done, the young girl whom he had not seen again since leaving The Hague, remained speechless. Remembering how he had admired the loftiness of the young girl's sentiments, he now regretted the vehemence of the language he had just used towards her. Now, no longer doubting the love with which she inspired Nominoë, he understood the cause of his son's irresolution on the very morning of the wedding, and why he had fled like one demented, when the nuptial procession was about to resume its march to the temple. Upon these thoughts, this other followed: His son loved a daughter of the Nerowegs! a descendant of that race that the descendants of Joel had so often cursed across the ages! And yet, the beauty and the tears of Mademoiselle Plouernel, now prostrated at his feet, moved Salaun despite himself, especially when Bertha said to him in heartrending accents:
"I was not aware of the death of Nominoë's bride, when, a minute ago, I say it without blushing, I offered my hand to your son."
"You?" cried Salaun, hardly believing what he heard. "You, mademoiselle! A Plouernel!"
"This union of one of the descendants of Joel with a daughter of Neroweg was, in my estimation, to repair the iniquities that for centuries my family whelmed yours with."
"Noble and generous heart!" cried Serdan.
Salaun remained silent and pensive. Nominoë, still upon his knees beside Bertha, and overcome with sorrow by the death of Tina, dared at this moment to raise his moist and suppliant eyes to his father. His looks seemed to say:
"Do you still deem me so guilty for loving Mademoiselle Plouernel?"