Her husband, a brave but wild and reckless man, had compelled her for years before he lost his life on the battle-field of Waterloo to provide for her own support. She had taken lodgings in the rear part of the building which she now owned, and rented out the larger part of the rooms to single gentlemen. She had always tried to keep up pleasant relations with her "foster-children," but with none of them had she been on as friendly a footing as with a certain Monsieur d'Estein, a descendant of French refugees, who supported himself by giving lessons in the tongue of his ancestors. Monsieur d'Estein was an old bachelor of kind heart but very eccentric, who had fallen out with the whole world, and yet shared his last mouthful of bread with any one who asked him for it. He had his own ideas about everything, and brooded constantly over plans how to overthrow the whole world, while he led all the time a most simple, harmless life.
Monsieur d'Estein had been living with her several years and had become a warm friend of hers, who listened patiently to all her complaints about hard times and domestic troubles, when one fine day a Colonel Montbert, of the French army, came and called on his relation, Monsieur d'Estein. The colonel was under orders for Russia--it was in 1812--and he was accompanied by a little daughter of eight, a lovely child, whom the father loved tenderly, and perhaps all the more tenderly as she stood perfectly alone in the world, and had no one on earth to love and protect her except her father. Until now she had followed the colonel in all his campaigns, but the brave old soldier trembled at the idea of exposing his only treasure to the dangers of a winter campaign, the results of which he might even then have anticipated. As he had been in Berlin in 1807, and had then made Monsieur d'Estein's acquaintance, he came now once more to ask him to take care of Marie till he returned; and if he should not return, there were the family papers, and a large sum of money in gold and bills of exchange; and the friends looked at each other and shook hands. The colonel kissed his little girl, promised to bring her a sleigh with two reindeer from Russia, kissed her once more, cried: Adieu, ma chère! Adieu, ma petite! mounted his horse and was gone.
Colonel Montbert never fulfilled his promise about the sleigh and the reindeer. His little girl waited and waited for the sleigh and the father till she was a tall young lady, but sleigh and father never came.
Marie had grown up a tall, fair girl, so beautiful that the whole neighborhood called her, unanimously, pretty Marie. She was a good girl too, with a good heart, that could be merry with the joyous and weep with the sorrowful. Her only fault was an over-active imagination, a fondness of strange, extraordinary things--an inheritance from her father, the French colonel of cavalry, whose adventurous, fantastic disposition Monsieur d'Estein said approached very near to insanity.
This peculiarity of the girl caused much anxiety to Monsieur d'Estein and to Mrs. Black, but especially to the former, whose plain, straight-forward mind was utterly averse to everything irrational or fantastic. "The girl ought to have no time for dreams," he used to say; "she must learn to think and to act. She ought to have a counterpoise to her gay dream-world in the prosaic reality of life. No man ought to live in castles in the air." According to these views he sketched out a plan of education for little Marie, with which Mrs. Black never could fully agree, in spite of the unbounded respect she had for Monsieur d'Estein's intelligence and character. Marie was to dress in the simplest way, like the children of humble mechanics; she was to learn every kind of domestic labor: and when she was grown up Monsieur d'Estein carried his oddity so far that he sent her to a respectable milliner. "One could never know but that it might become useful to her in after life." Mrs. Black shook her head, but she could not be angry at the old gentleman's odd notions when she saw how well he meant it, and especially how successful he was. For the girl grew brighter and fairer every day, and looked, in her simple calico dress and her plain straw bonnet, as refined and as distinguished as the greatest lady in the land.
Mrs. Black was proud of the girl. She had never had any children of her own, but she felt as if she could never have loved one of her own better. And was she not the child's mother? Had she not watched over her in health, and nursed her in sickness? And was the girl not as fondly attached to her as a daughter could be to a mother? Mrs. Black was almost jealous of this love (she had had so little love in her life) and did not like it that Marie had not evidently more confidence in her than in her adopted father. But the latter was, for his part, not less jealous. Mrs. Black even sometimes suspected that monsieur was cherishing very different feelings for his beautiful niece, as he called her, from those of an uncle for his niece, and that his system of education which confined Marie very strictly to the house, might have been prompted by other than pedagogic considerations. Monsieur was at that time only forty years old. It was the mere shadow of a suspicion, but subsequent events gave it strength.
One evening--it was a Sunday--monsieur returned from his promenade with Marie very much out of temper. Marie also looked excited, and showed traces of tears in her beautiful eyes. She went to bed as soon as supper was over, and Mrs. Black begged monsieur to tell her what had happened, till he at last consented.
Marie and he had been walking up and down in the long avenues of the public park, chatting cozily with each other, and had then gone into one of the public gardens, there to order some refreshments for Marie and himself. They had just taken their seats at a table when two gentlemen, who had before been sitting at a distance, had come and taken seats near them. Monsieur, who turned his back to them, had not noticed them, and only became aware of their presence when he saw Marie, who was talking to him, cast half-curious, half-embarrassed glances at somebody behind him. He turned round to see what was the matter. At the same moment one of the gentlemen approached their table. He was a remarkably handsome man--monsieur could not deny that, in spite of his irritation--a lofty, noble figure, a superb head, a fine though somewhat exhausted face, large deep-blue eyes, with a haughty and yet kindly expression. He lifted his hat and in very good French--monsieur and Marie had as usual conversed in French--he asked leave for himself and his companion to join their company. Monsieur was the most courteous man in the world, but he said there had been something in the manner of the distinguished stranger which had filled him instantly with a violent aversion against him, and he had therefore replied dryly and curtly that he and mademoiselle preferred remaining alone. Thereupon a slight altercation between him and the stranger had taken place, which ended in his rising and leaving the garden with Marie, pursued by the scornful laugh of the two gentlemen. From that evening Marie showed a decided change in her whole manner. Formerly gay and cheerful, she now hung her head, turned pale and red by turns, was at one time immoderately merry and at another time wretchedly sad. Neither Mrs. Black nor monsieur knew what to make of it. Misfortune would have it that monsieur must be taken sick just then, so that Mrs. Black had to spend nearly her whole time in his room nursing him, and Marie consequently was left much to herself. Formerly monsieur had regularly gone for her to the place where she learnt her profession; now she had to come home alone. What happened to her during these days, into what snares she had fallen, Mrs. Black never found out. But one morning, when she came to wake the poor girl, she found the room empty, and a little note on the table, in which the unfortunate child stated that irresistible reasons, which she could not now explain, compelled her to leave town; that she begged her benefactors with tears in her eyes to forgive her if she rewarded them for their great love with apparent ingratitude, and that she hoped to God the day would come, and come soon, on which all this sorrow would be changed into joy.
That day had never come, but the poor lady had suffered more and more. Monsieur had nearly lost his senses when he heard of Marie's escape, and had sworn a fearful oath that he would not rest an hour till he had rescued Marie from her miserable seducer and personally avenged himself on the man. Monsieur was the man to keep his word. The little weakly body harbored an energetic soul. This became evident now, when a ruthless hand had cruelly destroyed the happiness of his life. For Mrs. Black could now no longer doubt that the strange man had loved the lost one with all that intense passionateness which is so often found in such reserved, eccentric characters. He carried on his search with restless activity. Success crowned his efforts. He found traces. Where they led him? He said nothing about it, but observed the strictest silence upon the whole affair, even to his friend, Mrs. Black. He packed his trunks as if for a long journey, tore himself from her, promising to send her news in a week--and now twenty-five years had passed, and Mrs. Black was still waiting for a fulfilment of that promise....
The old lady had so completely abandoned herself to her own recollections that she had forgotten her first intention to inquire after Oswald's troubles. She was only reminded of this when she noticed how pale the young stranger's face had become during her recital.