Marie shared this conviction, so her fears were to some extent allayed.
One day M. David said to Madame Bastien:
"While accepting with comparative cheerfulness the modest existence led by the members of your household, madame, has he never seemed to crave wealth and luxury, or deplore the fact that he does not possess them?"
"Never, M. David, never have I heard Frederick express a desire of that kind. How often has he tenderly exclaimed:
"'Ah, mother, could any lot be happier than ours? What happiness it is to be able to live on here with you—'"
But the poor mother could not finish the sentence. This recollection of a radiant past was too overpowering.
Each day the intimacy between Henri David and Marie Bastien was increased by their common interests and anxieties. There was a continual interchange of questions, confidences, fears, plans or hopes, alas! only too rare,—all having Frederick for their object.
The long winter evenings were usually passed tête-à-tête, for Madame Bastien's son retired at eight o'clock, feigning fatigue in order to escape from the solicitude that surrounded him, and that he might pursue his gloomy meditations undisturbed.
"I am more unhappy now than ever," he said to himself. "In times gone by my mother's continual questions about my secret malady irritated me; now they break my heart and augment my despair. I understand all my mother must suffer. Each day brings some new proof of her tender commiseration and her untiring efforts to cure me, but, alas! she can never forgive nor forget my crime. I shall be to her henceforth only an object of compassion. I think exactly the same of M. David that I do of my mother. I do full justice to his devotion to me and to my mother, but it is equally powerless to cure me, and to efface the remembrance of the vile and cowardly act of which I was guilty."
Meanwhile Henri David, believing himself on the track at last, was extending his researches to the most trivial subjects, at least apparently. Convinced that Frederick had powerful reasons for concealing his feelings from his mother, he might exercise less constraint in his intercourse with the two old servants on the place. Henri questioned them closely, and thus became cognisant of several highly significant facts. Among others, a beggar to whom Frederick had always been very generous said to the gardener: "M. Frederick has changed very much. He always used to be so kind-hearted, but to-day he gruffly told me: 'Apply to M. le marquis. He is so rich! Let him help you!'"