"Mother," replied Charlotte, raising her head proudly, "my love is as noble and pure as the man who calls it forth."
Gertrude, the serving maid, here again broke precipitately into the room, joyfully crying as she crossed the threshold:
"Madam, good news! Your husband has just entered the courtyard."
"My husband in Paris!" exclaimed Madam Desmarais. "What can have taken place at Versailles? Perhaps the Assembly is dissolved! Perhaps he is proscribed, a fugitive! My God, have pity on us!"
She rushed to the door to meet her husband, but checked herself long enough to say to Charlotte:
"Swear to me to forget at once this shameful love. On that condition I consent to withhold from your father all knowledge of the wretched affair."
"My father shall know all!" replied Charlotte resolutely, as Monsieur Desmarais entered the room.
CHAPTER X.
DEPUTY DESMARAIS.
The deputy of the Third Estate was a man in the prime of life; his intellectual face betrayed more of diplomacy than of frankness. The disorder of his apparel and the perspiration that covered his brow bespoke the precipitancy of his return. His pallor, the contortion of his features, the fear portrayed upon them, disclosed the anxiety of his mind. But his whole expression relaxed at sight of Charlotte and her mother. He pressed them several times in turn to his bosom, and cried joyously:
"Dear wife—dear daughter—embrace me again! I never before thought what a consolation in these cursed times the sweet joys of the domestic hearth would prove."