This little pantomime did not escape the Baron, who looked hard at his wife. Adeline cast down her eyes and went out into the garden; her husband followed her.
“Come, what is it, Adeline?” said he, putting his arm round her waist and pressing her to his side. “Do not you know that I love you more than——”
“More than Jenny Cadine or Josepha!” said she, boldly interrupting him.
“Who put that into your head?” exclaimed the Baron, releasing his wife, and starting back a step or two.
“I got an anonymous letter, which I burnt at once, in which I was told, my dear, that the reason Hortense’s marriage was broken off was the poverty of our circumstances. Your wife, my dear Hector, would never have said a word; she knew of your connection with Jenny Cadine, and did she ever complain?—But as the mother of Hortense, I am bound to speak the truth.”
Hulot, after a short silence, which was terrible to his wife, whose heart beat loud enough to be heard, opened his arms, clasped her to his heart, kissed her forehead, and said with the vehemence of enthusiasm:
“Adeline, you are an angel, and I am a wretch——”
“No, no,” cried the Baroness, hastily laying her hand upon his lips to hinder him from speaking evil of himself.
“Yes, for I have not at this moment a sou to give to Hortense, and I am most unhappy. But since you open your heart to me, I may pour into it the trouble that is crushing me.—Your Uncle Fischer is in difficulties, and it is I who dragged him there, for he has accepted bills for me to the amount of twenty-five thousand francs! And all for a woman who deceives me, who laughs at me behind my back, and calls me an old dyed Tom. It is frightful! A vice which costs me more than it would to maintain a family!—And I cannot resist!—I would promise you here and now never to see that abominable Jewess again; but if she wrote me two lines, I should go to her, as we marched into fire under the Emperor.”
“Do not be so distressed,” cried the poor woman in despair, but forgetting her daughter as she saw the tears in her husband’s eyes. “There are my diamonds; whatever happens, save my uncle.”