“Oh! do not speak thus, my dear sister! It frightens me.”
By a sympathetic impulse, the orphans took one another by the hand, while they pressed close together, and looked around with involuntary fear. The sensation they felt was in fact deep, strange, inexplicable, and yet lowering—one of those dark presentiments which come over us, in spite of ourselves—those fatal gleams of prescience, which throw a lurid light on the mysterious profundities of the future.
Unaccountable glimpses of divination! often no sooner perceived than forgotten—but, when justified by the event, appearing with all the attributes of an awful fatality!
The daughters of Marshal Simon were still absorbed in the mournful reverie which these singular thoughts had awakened, when Dagobert’s wife, returning from her son’s chamber, entered the room with a painfully agitated countenance.
CHAPTER XLVII. THE LETTER.
Frances’ agitation was so perceptible that Rose could not help exclaiming: “Good gracious, what is the matter?”
“Alas, my dear young ladies! I can no longer conceal it from you,” said Frances, bursting into tears. “Since yesterday I have not seen him. I expected my son to supper as usual, and he never came; but I would not let you see how much I suffered. I continued to expect him, minute after minute; for ten years he has never gone up to bed without coming to kiss me; so I spent a good part of the night close to the door, listening if I could hear his step. But he did not come; and, at last, about three o’clock in the morning, I threw myself down upon the mattress. I have just been to see (for I still had a faint hope), if my son had come in this morning—”
“Well, madame!”
“There is no sign of him!” said the poor mother, drying her eyes.