Monsieur de Boisguilbault, seeing that the carpenter was lost in thought, began to scrutinize Gilberte's features more closely than he had as yet dared to do, and a sort of shudder passed over him when he saw, beneath the black lace which had partly fallen from her head, the luxuriant dazzling masses of golden hair. But he was roused from his contemplation by the carpenter, who said to him in an undertone:
"Monsieur de Boisguilbault, I'll bet that you haven't a suspicion of what I am going to tell you. Look carefully at this pretty little lady, and then I will tell you who she is."
Monsieur de Boisguilbault turned pale and gazed at the carpenter with a dismayed expression.
XXXI
UNCERTAINTY
"Well, Monsieur de Boisguilbault, have you looked at her enough," continued the carpenter, with a mischievous, self-satisfied air, "and cannot you yourself guess what should interest you most in her?"
The marquis rose and at once fell back in his chair. A ray of light had passed through his mind at last, and his penetration, so long at fault, suddenly went farther than Jean desired. He thought that he had guessed, and he cried in a tone of intense indignation:
"She shall not stay here an instant longer!"
Gilberte, awakened with a start and terrified beyond words, saw before her the marquis's angry face. She thought that she was lost, and reflecting with despair that, instead of bringing her father and Monsieur de Boisguilbault together, she would be the cause of embittering their enmity, she had no other thought than to take all the blame upon herself and to seek pardon for Monsieur Antoine. Falling on her knees with the grace of a flower bending before the tempest, she seized the marquis's trembling hand, and, too agitated to speak, bowed her lovely head and leaned her pallid brow on the old man's arm.
"Well, well," said the carpenter, seizing the marquis's other arm and shaking it violently, "what are you thinking about, Monsieur de Boisguilbault, to frighten this child so? Is your mania taking hold of you again, and shall I have to lose my temper with you, after all?"