But one morning a card was placed in his hand, with the name—"Joseph Poincot, Shipowner, Havre."
The husband! The husband, who had said nothing, realizing that there was no use in struggling against the desperate obstinacy of women. What did he want?
He was waiting in the garden, having refused to come into the house. He bowed politely, but would not sit down, even on a bench in a gravel-path, and he commenced talking clearly and slowly.
"Monsieur, I did not come here to address reproaches to you. I know too well how things happened. I have been the victim of—we have been the victims of—a kind of fatality. I would never have disturbed you in your retreat if the situation had not changed. I have two daughters, Monsieur. One of them, the elder, loves a young man, and is loved by him. But the family of this young man is opposed to the marriage, basing their objection on the situation of—my daughter's mother. I have no feeling of either anger or spite, but I love my children, Monsieur. I have, therefore, come to ask my wife to return home. I hope that to-day she will consent to go back to my house—to her own house. As for me, I will make a show of having forgotten, for—for the sake of my daughters."
Renoldi felt a wild movement in his heart, and he was inundated with a delirium of joy like a condemned man who receives a pardon.
He stammered: "Why, yes—certainly, Monsieur—I myself—be assured of it—no doubt—it is right, it is only quite right."
This time M. Poincot no longer declined to sit down.
Renoldi then rushed up the stairs, and pausing at the door of his mistress's room, to collect his senses, entered gravely.
"There is somebody below waiting to see you," he said. "'Tis to tell you something about your daughters."
She rose up. "My daughters? What about them? They are not dead?"