After a moment's pause, the countess collected her thoughts, and said to Rodolph, in a faltering voice, "Learning your marriage, and thinking of marrying myself, I could not keep our child with me; she was then four years of age."
"But at that time I begged her of you with prayers, entreaties," cried Rodolph, in a heartrending tone, "and my letters were unanswered; the only one you wrote to me announced her death!"
"I was desirous of avenging myself of your contempt by refusing your child. It was shameful; but hear me! I feel my life ebbs from me; this last blow has overcome me!"
"No, no, I do not believe you; I will not believe you! The Goualeuse my daughter! Oh, mon Dieu! You would not have this so!"
"Listen to me! When she was four years old, my brother charged Madame Séraphin, the widow of an old servant, to bring the child up until she was old enough to go to school. The sum destined to support our child was deposited by my brother with a notary, celebrated for his honesty. The letters of this man and Madame Séraphin, addressed at the time to me and my brother, are there, in the casket. At the end of a year they wrote me word that my daughter's health was failing,—eight months afterwards that she was dead, and they sent the register of her decease. At this time Madame Séraphin had entered the service of Jacques Ferrand, after having given our daughter over to the Chouette, through the medium of a wretch who is now at the galleys at Rochefort. I was writing down all this when the Chouette stabbed me. This paper is there also, with a portrait of our daughter when four years of age. Examine all,—letters, declaration, portrait,—and you who have seen her, the unhappy child, will judge—"
These words exhausted Sarah, and she fell fainting into her armchair.
Rodolph was thunderstruck at this disclosure. There are misfortunes so unforeseen, so horrible, that we try not to believe them until the overwhelming evidence compels us. Rodolph, persuaded of the death of Fleur-de-Marie, had but one hope,—that of convincing himself that she was not his daughter. With a frightful calmness that alarmed Sarah, he approached the table, opened the casket, and began to read the letters, examining with scrupulous attention the papers which accompanied them.
These letters, bearing the postmark, and dated, written to Sarah and her brother by the notary and Madame Séraphin, related to the infancy of Fleur-de-Marie, and the investment of the money destined for her. Rodolph could not doubt the authenticity of this correspondence.
The Chouette's declaration was confirmed by the particulars collected at Rodolph's desire, in which a felon named Pierre Tournemine, then at Rochefort, was described as the individual who had received Fleur-de-Marie from the hands of Madame Séraphin, for the purpose of giving her up to the Chouette,—the relentless tormentor of her early years,—and whom she afterwards so unexpectedly recognised when in company with Rodolph at the tapis-franc of the ogress.
The attestation of the child's death was duly drawn up and attested, but Ferrand himself had confessed to Cecily that it had merely been employed to obtain possession of a considerable sum of money due to the unfortunate infant, whose decease it so falsely recorded, and who had subsequently been drowned by his order while crossing to the Isle du Ravageur.