Marc solved it for them. He disappeared, without saying good-by. I guessed that he had gone to sea again.
He had said, the night before he left us, “Pierre, I will not wreck her life as she has wrecked mine. I will not seek her; but God save her if she crosses my path in this life.”
I was right; he had gone to sea. I got a letter a week after, with the Marseilles postmark on it.
“I am mate of the Lépante,” Marc said.
Months had passed since their marriage—about a year. Cécile was a mother. She called upon me in her carriage one day. A nurse was in attendance upon her, carrying in her arms a little child. It was a girl, two months old. Cécile was proud; but M. André chuckled incessantly, as old cocks will. I, with my terrible secret, could hardly bear to look at her.
“You are not friendly with me now, M. Crépin,” she said; “not as you used to be. I desire to keep all my old friends, and to make as many new ones as I can.”
I replied as well as I could; for I was thinking of Madame Debois, and not of Madame André, as she was now called.
“I have come to ask a favour. Say you will grant it me?”
Like a Frenchman, I bowed complaisantly.