“What sacrifice? What I feel is that to sin, and then to bribe to escape its consequences, is to sin twice.”
The other stared at her.
“What will you do, then?”
Nathalie’s voice carried anguish. “I shall urge him to meet it.”
Claire made a step towards her. “Meet it? Do you mean own that he has done it?”
Nathalie encountered her eye, her voice, without quailing. She was vaguely sorry for these others who were suffering; but all her emotions fastened themselves upon her husband, and remembering some words he had let drop, she started. “Where is Léon?” she cried.
“With his mother. You need not be afraid for him,” said Claire, scornfully; “he has always taken care of himself, and he will do so to his dying day. I don’t know why I was such a fool as to be alarmed at hearing the advice you are going to bestow upon him, for Léon will never face a disagreeable so long as he can find a means of slipping round it. You may do your worst. Of course, you can’t be expected to feel what we feel: the disgrace—the horrible shame—the—” She stopped, choked. Nathalie looked at her, neither assenting nor denying, and, after a moment’s pause, the other began again:
“It must be crushed down, even if Poissy has to go. The name comes first. This man—it is true, is it not, that he will accept money!”
“Do you know what you are saying!” said her sister-in-law, speaking in a low, even voice. “If Léon did what you demand, he would be owning himself the thief they call him. He took the money, but it was not to keep; he wrote to Monsieur de Cadanet and told him what he had done, and promised to pay it back, and did it. He owes nothing.”
“You believe this!”