In the past two weeks the memory had come back more bitterly. How different, he had thought in the long nights, if she had been there! They would have watched hand in hand and whispered hope and comfort to each other. One would have slept calmly when wearied, knowing that the tender love of the other guarded their baby. And what happiness would have been theirs that hour when the fever broke and Raymond passed from stupor to natural sleep! But she had not loved him—she had not even loved her boy; for she had deserted both.
Rose, the maid, who had been in their house since his marriage, softly opened the door and whispered that Madame Varenne was in the library waiting to see him. He rose with a sigh, and after a last look at the sleeping child, tiptoed out of the room and noiselessly shut the door behind him.
Madame Varenne was a sprightly young widow, the sister of Dr. Chennel, who attended Raymond as if the boy were his own son. Madame Varenne, too, had almost a motherly affection for the child and something beyond admiration for the handsome, slightly grayed father. They supposed, as did everyone else in Passy, that Madame Floriot was dead. Floriot was living in Paris when she left him and he moved out to Passy shortly afterward.
He shook hands with her cordially as he came in.
"How kind of you to come, Madame Varenne!" he said, gratefully. The young woman looked up at him with a happy smile.
"I am delighted with the news that Rose has just given me!" she exclaimed, pressing his hand.
"Yes," he smiled wearily, "our nightmare is over and it was time it finished. I couldn't have held out much longer."
"You have had a bad time of it," she murmured, sympathetically.
"It hasn't been easy. And I shall never be able, to thank your brother enough for what he has done for me," and Floriot's voice trembled.
"He has thought of nothing else beside the boy for weeks and he was always talking about him," declared Madame Varenne, shaking her head. "The day before yesterday he went to see one of his old professors to consult him on the treatment, and he was hard at work that night experimenting and reading."