“Let me see. I think he began with asking whether there was anything about Poissy in the paper.”
“In the paper!” The young man caught up Le Temps and devoured the columns. “But there is not, of course. Go on, Amélie. What next?”
“I believe he wanted to know if I knew the name—if you had ever mentioned it to me. You never have, my friend, and so I told him.”
“Yes?”
“Then he remarked—I don’t know why—that a boy had been born there. And that must have been all he said, except that he had known Poissy in old days.”
“Confound it! what did he mean?” muttered her husband, standing chin in hand.
“Oh, I suppose it is some place where he was when he was young, and that it just came across his mind at that moment. Unless you think there is some one there whom he wishes to see? What a pity he did not say more!”
“If he does come to his senses, let me advise you not to make any suggestions of that sort,” said Charles, controlling himself with difficulty. “The owner of Poissy is an extravagant good-for-nothing, who has mortally offended your uncle, and the probable result of mentioning his name would be to bring on a most dangerous excitement.”
“Then I will not, of course, because nothing could be so bad for him. But I am very sorry. It would be so much happier for him, poor dear! if there were some one besides ourselves in whom he could take an interest, especially if there was a child.”
To this her husband made no answer. His wife’s personal opinions were profoundly indifferent to him, and so long as she was impressed with the danger of exciting M. de Cadanet, she might utter as many futile aspirations as she pleased. But what she had told him gave him uneasiness—more from a vague dread of Léon de Beaudrillart than from a well-grounded fear. He had a fancy that M. de Cadanet’s thoughts turned sometimes with yearning in that direction, and he had with great care avoided ever mentioning the birth of a son at Poissy. How the old man had discovered this event he could not conceive. Most alarming of all was the fact that he had not only known but had kept silence, since it pointed to possible other reticences; and Charles had all the schemer’s distrust for the unknown. He believed, however, that if M. de Cadanet died in his present condition, he was certain to come into so much of his property as he could will away; if he recovered, and his brain still worked with painful ideas of this child at Poissy—grandson of the man who had befriended him—it was impossible to be sure that some foolish sentiment, some insane impulse of gratitude, might not prove strong enough to upset his former dispositions. The lust of gambling had increased upon the young man, debts had swollen, creditors pressed. Between him and things he loved best in the world a brazen gate was slowly shutting, and he knew that it wanted but the clink of M. de Cadanet’s money for the barrier to roll swiftly back, and fling open a garden of delight. Now, that, added to his other anxieties, there came this new doubt as to the disposition of the wealth which he had been, counting on as his own, he cursed fate freely, and went about the house with an injured air.