After this explosion, she muttered a few disconnected words, and her eyes closed; Corentin felt the relaxing of all the muscles by which she had held him as in a vice the moment before, and he took her in his arms and laid her on the sofa, insensible.
“Do not stay here, monsieur,” said Corentin. “Go into my study; I will come to you presently.”
A few minutes later, after giving Lydie into the care of Katte and Bruneau, and despatching Perrache for Doctor Bianchon, Corentin rejoined la Peyrade.
“You see now, monsieur,” he said with solemnity, “that in pursuing with a sort of passion the idea of this marriage, I was following, in a sense, the ways of God.”
“Monsieur,” said la Peyrade, with compunction, “I will confess to you—”
“Useless,” said Corentin; “you can tell me nothing that I do not know; I, on the contrary, have much to tell you. Old Peyrade, your uncle, in the hope of earning a POT for this daughter whom he idolized, entered into a dangerous private enterprise, the nature of which I need not explain. In it he made enemies; enemies who stopped at nothing,—murder, poison, rape. To paralyze your uncle’s action by attacking him in his dearest spot, Lydie was, not abducted, but enticed from her home and taken to a house apparently respectable, where for ten days she was kept concealed. She was not much alarmed by this detention, being told that it was done at her father’s wish, and she spent her time with her music—you remember, monsieur, how she sang?”
“Oh!” exclaimed la Peyrade, covering his face with his hands.
“I told you yesterday that you might perhaps have more upon your conscience than the Thuillier house. But you were young; you had just come from your province, with that brutality, that frenzy of Southern blood in your veins which flings itself upon such an occasion. Besides, your relationship became known to those who were preparing the ruin of this new Clarissa Harlowe, and I am willing to believe than an abler and better man than you might not have escaped the entanglement into which you fell. Happily, Providence has granted that there is nothing absolutely irreparable in this horrible history. The same poison, according to the use that is made of it, may give either death or health.”
“But, monsieur,” said la Peyrade, “shall I not always be to her an object of horror?”
“The doctor, monsieur,” said Katte, opening the door.