“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve no dot any more.”
“Is that it? Margaret, I don’t deserve to have you treat me like this. There’s something in you, in your eyes, like a radiant flame of life. When I look at you I feel courage in me, a desire for good, and a disdain for all the petty satisfactions that material things can give. Beside this, this faith that you give me, which will be my strength, what is money?”
“And if to-morrow——”
As she did not go on with the phrase he repeated:
“If to-morrow?”
“If a still greater misfortune awaits us to-morrow, if to-morrow my brother Maurice is declared guilty?”
“I came to-day on account of that danger. I wanted to claim the honour of supporting your father to-morrow at the trial like a son. I had to see you to-day.”
“Ah!” she murmured, thunderstruck.
He could see from the tone of this simple exclamation that all the indifference she had shown him was falling away at last. On her pale face, whose every expression he had followed, he distinguished suddenly sympathy and gratitude, perhaps something further still. Happiness was there—uncertain, clouded, but still there. And its presence stirred his heart.