"Good gracious!" exclaimed the girl, feeling it necessary to say something in return for the old Frenchman's politeness, while, as a matter of fact, she had heard the story from her father only a night or so before. "Good gracious!"
"Ah! yes. Ah! yes," Lemaire continued. "It was so indeed. Indeed it was. Then, they do say----" And now he sank his voice so much that he might have been reciting the history of some most awful and soul-stirring Greek tragedy, "they do say that in her rage and despair she flung herself away on Carmaux. But the tommy-goff killed him after he trod on it in the woods--and, so, she was free." Then his voice rose crescendo, as though the mention of the tragedy being concluded, a lighter tone was permissible.
"Take some more claret," said Mr. Spranger; "help yourself." While as the old gentleman did so, he continued--
"But how in such circumstances did she become a resident in Mr. Ritherdon's house? One would have thought that was the last place she would be found in next."
"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire, "then the woman's heart, the heart of all good women"--and he bowed solemnly now to Beatrix--"exerted its sway. She was bereft, even the little girl, the poor little daughter that had been born to her after Carmaux's death--when the tommy-goff killed him--was dead and buried----"
"So she had had a daughter?" said Mr. Spranger.
"Poor woman, yes. But what--what was I saying. The good woman's heart prompted her, and, smothering her own griefs, forgetting her own wrongs, knowing the stupendous misery which had fallen on the man who had jilted her through the loss of his wife, she went to him and offered to look after the poor little motherless Sebastian; to be a guide and nurse to it. Ah! a noble woman was Miriam Carmaux, a woman who buried her own griefs in assuaging those of others."
"She went to Desolada," Julian said, "after Mrs. Ritherdon's death? She did that? After Mrs. Ritherdon's death?"
"Si. After her death. Soon. Very soon. As soon as her own sorrows, her own loss, were more or less softened."
That night, when Monsieur Lemaire had been driven back into the city in Mr. Spranger's buggy, the latter gentleman, his daughter and Julian, sat out on the lawn, inhaling the cool breeze which comes up from the sea at sunset as well as watching the fireflies dancing. All were quite silent now, for all were occupied with their own thoughts: Julian in reflecting on what Monsieur Lemaire had said; Beatrix in wondering whether George Ritherdon's dying disclosures could possibly have been true; Mr. Spranger in feeling positive that they were false. Everything, he told himself, or almost everything, pointed to such being the case. The registration of Sebastian's birth by the late Mr. Ritherdon; the acknowledgment of the young man during all the dead man's remaining years as his heir: the knowledge which countless people possessed in the colony of Sebastian's whole life having been passed at Desolada! And against this, what set-off was there?