"Here? Where? At Porto Venere?"
"In Italy."
"Oho! then Fauvel is going to do some errands for you at Genoa, I suppose, and return to-morrow?"
"No!" said Laurent, vexed by this curiosity, which seemed to him ungentlemanly; "I am going to Switzerland, and Mademoiselle Jacques is not. Does that surprise you? Very good; then let me tell you that Mademoiselle Jacques is about to leave me, and that I am very much distressed. Do you understand?"
"No!" said Vérac, smiling; "but I am not obliged——"
"Yes, you are; you must understand what is a fact," retorted Laurent, with a vehemence that was slightly overbearing; "I have deserved what has happened to me, and I submit to it because Mademoiselle Jacques, regardless of the wrong I have done her, deigned to be a sister and a mother to me in a mortal illness which I have just gone through; so that I owe her as much gratitude as respect and affection."
Vérac was greatly surprised by what he heard. It was a story which resembled nothing in his experience. He walked discreetly away, after remarking to Thérèse that no noble action on her part would surprise him; but he watched the parting of the friends out of the corner of his eye. Thérèse, standing at the top of the gangway, crowded and jostled by the natives who embraced one another tumultuously and noisily at the clang of the warning-bell, bestowed a maternal kiss on Laurent's forehead. They both shed tears; then she went down into the skiff, and was rowed ashore to the shapeless, dirty staircase of flat stones which led to the hamlet of Porto Venere.
Laurent was amazed to see her go in that direction, instead of toward Spezzia.
"Ah!" he thought, weeping afresh, "of course, Palmer is waiting for her there!"