“Did you go with him to the Courts this morning?”
“Yes, madame.”
“And to-day is Monday?”
“Yes, madame.”
“Then do the Courts sit on Mondays nowadays?”
“Devil take you!” cried the man, as his mistress drove off after saying to the coachman:
“Rue Taitbout.”
Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille was weeping: Roger, sitting by her side, held one of her hands between his own. He was silent, looking by turns at little Charles—who, not understanding his mother’s grief, stood speechless at the sight of her tears—at the cot where Eugenie lay sleeping, and Caroline’s face, on which grief had the effect of rain falling across the beams of cheerful sunshine.
“Yes, my darling,” said Roger, after a long silence, “that is the great secret: I am married. But some day I hope we may form but one family. My wife has been given over ever since last March. I do not wish her dead; still, if it should please God to take her to Himself, I believe she will be happier in Paradise than in a world to whose griefs and pleasures she is equally indifferent.”
“How I hate that woman! How could she bear to make you unhappy? And yet it is to that unhappiness that I owe my happiness!”