"I persuaded her to rest, and let me act for her. My investigations were lamentably successful. The count had returned to America. The child had died of fatigue on arriving there.
"When I was obliged to convey that horrible news to the unhappy creature, I was terrified myself at the calmness she displayed. At last, she wept, and I saw that she was saved. I was forced to leave her; she told me that she proposed to settle where she was. I was distressed by her destitution; she deceived me by telling me that her mother would not allow her to lack anything. I learned later that her poor mother would have been powerless to help her; she had not a centime at her disposal for which she had not to account. Moreover, she was entirely ignorant of all her daughter's misfortunes. Thérèse, who wrote to her in secret, had concealed them in order not to drive her to desperation.
"Thérèse lived on in England, giving lessons in French, drawing, and music, for she possessed talents which she had the courage to turn to account, that she might not have to accept compassion from any one.
"After a year, she returned to France, and settled in Paris, where she had never been, and where no one knew her. She was then but twenty years old; she was married at sixteen. She was no longer at all pretty, and it required eight years of repose and resignation to restore her health and her gentle gaiety of long ago.
"During all that time, I saw her only at rare intervals, for I am always travelling; but I always found her dignified and proud, working with invincible courage, and concealing her poverty behind miraculous neatness and cleanliness, never complaining of God, or of any mortal, refusing to talk of the past, sometimes caressing children by stealth and leaving them as soon as one looked at her, fearing, doubtless, that she might betray some emotion.
"I had not seen her for three years, when I came to ask you to paint my portrait, and I was trying to find her address, which I was on the point of asking you for when you mentioned her to me. Having arrived only the night before, I did not know that she had at last attained success, celebrity, and a comfortable income.
"It was only on finding her under such conditions, that it occurred to me that that heart, so long crushed, might live again, and suffer—or be happy. Try to make her happy, my dear Laurent, she has well earned it! And, if you are not sure that you will not make her suffer, blow out your brains to-night rather than return to her. That is all that I had to say to you."
"Stay," said Laurent, deeply moved; "this Comte de ——, is he still alive?"
"Unfortunately, yes. These men who drive other people to despair are always in good health and escape all dangers. They never hand in their resignations; why, this fellow recently had the presumption to send me a letter for Thérèse, which I handed to her in your presence, which she treated as it deserved."
Laurent had thought of marrying Thérèse as he listened to Monsieur Palmer's narrative. That narrative had produced a revolution in him. The monotonous tone, the pronounced accent, and a few curious grammatical lapses which we have not thought it worth our while to reproduce, had imparted to it, in his auditor's vivid imagination, an indefinable something as strange and terrible as Thérèse's destiny. That girl without kindred, that mother without children, that wife without a husband, was surely doomed to an exceptionally cruel fate! What depressing notions of love and life she must have retained! The sphinx reappeared before Laurent's dazzled eyes. Thérèse unveiled seemed to him more mysterious than ever; had she ever been consoled? could she be for a single instant?