Mme. de Gernancé could not refrain from showing the surprise she felt; but without giving her time to speak, Elinor went on to tell her about the rash scheme she had formed on the voyage, and the means she had adopted for carrying it out.
She came at last to the birth of the child, but here she was interrupted impetuously by her friend.
"What precautions and prudence to bestow on an act of sheer madness! How much you risked! How could you compromise in such a way your reputation, and indeed your very life! And why all these sacrifices? Just to grasp an imperfect happiness you are obliged to hide, and dare not show! So this is to what your excessive caution has brought you! Carried away by your imagination, you have hugged a chimera which led you to refuse the real blessings of life in favor of the hollow satisfaction of following a caprice! Oh, take my advice, lose no time in recalling the father of that dear child. Do not any longer deprive yourself of the pleasures of natural affection and the sweetest of home ties."
"Ah, it is no longer in my power," exclaimed Mme. de Roselis. "Listen a moment, and you shall see how I have been punished for the error you so severely condemn."
Then she reminded her of the young aide-de-camp who had been so much talked about at Mme. de B.'s, and who had been so keenly regretted by everybody.
"What!" cried Mme. de Gernancé, "was it he? Oh, what have you done, Elinor? How I pity you! Now you see how your folly has destroyed your peace of mind and happiness, and by a punishment that you richly deserve, it is not even possible for you to make any amends. Henceforth you will be a wife without a right to bear the name, and a mother, though you scarcely dare to have it known. You will spend your life blushing for the most natural and honorable of feelings, and you, so beautiful, so brilliant, so richly gifted by nature and fortune, have by your own perverse act deprived yourself of the happiness the meanest of women is entitled to enjoy, the happiness of having husband and child, the sweetest of all! But there is more in it even than that. I can read your heart; it is useless for your pride to try to conceal the fact from your friend and from yourself. Your heart is no longer in your own keeping; you love, you have given it—"
At this, Mme. de Roselis hid her face in her hands; the tears flowed from her eyes.
"Dear Elinor," said Mme. de Gernancé kindly, drawing nearer to her and taking her in her arms, "when I see you weep, I realize I love you too well to be your judge. Don't grieve any more for an evil that may be remedied. Let us hope that Léon is still alive, and that all may yet be condoned."
But at that word Elinor's tears ceased.
"Condoned!" she said proudly. "No, my dear, I do not think I should easily consent to what you call condoning it. I have done wrong, it is true, but not from weakness. I did it on purpose, after long consideration of the troubles I had borne. It is true I grieve over the fate of a man who does interest me, and whose life I have disturbed and perhaps shortened. I cannot be happy again until I know he is not dead; but as for giving up my independence, and by this change of mind letting people think I had been either weak or inconsequent this I shall never consent to."