"He believes you dying,—that you desire a last adieu,—and so he comes. You were wrong not to write to him of the discovery you are about to disclose to him."
"I know why I do so. This discovery will fill him with surprise, joy, and I shall be present to profit by his first burst of softened feeling. To-day or never he will say to me, 'A marriage must legitimise the birth of our child!' If he says so, his word is sacred, and then will the hope of my life be realised!"
"Yes, if he makes you the promise."
"And that he may do so, nothing must be neglected under these decisive circumstances. I know Rodolph; and once having found his daughter, he will overcome his aversion for me, and will not retreat from any sacrifice to assure her the most enviable lot, to make her as entirely happy as she has been until now wretched."
"However brilliant the destiny he may assure to your daughter, there is, between the reparation to her and the resolution to marry you in order to legitimise the birth of this child, a very wide abyss."
"Her father will pass over this abyss."
"But this unfortunate child has, perhaps, been so vitiated by the misery in which she has lived that the prince, instead of feeling attracted towards her—"
"What are you saying?" cried Sarah, interrupting her brother. "Is she not as handsome, as a young girl, as she was a lovely infant? Rodolph, without knowing her, was so deeply interested in her as to take charge of her future destiny, and sent her to his farm at Bouqueval, whence we carried her off."
"Yes, thanks to your obstinacy in desiring to break all the ties of the prince's affection, in the foolish hope of one day leading him back to yourself!"
"And yet, but for this foolish hope, I should not have discovered, at the price of my life, the secret of my daughter's existence. Is it not through this woman, who had carried her off from the farm, that I have learned the infamous deceit of the notary, Ferrand?"