"Nay, child," the marquise replied. "Think no evil of me. No base thoughts entered my mind. No remembrance that his son stood in the way of your half-brother's inheritance—he and your father being ostensibly De Vannes's heir. No! no! no! But in that hurried interval both he and I had made one fatal slip—had committed one hideous act of forgetfulness. He had forgotten to tell me—I to ask—where this son was, and in what name he was known."
The girl dropped her hands with a despairing action into her lap; then a moment later she turned the soft hazel eyes up again toward her mother's face and said: "Yet now you know! You have found out!"
"Yes, I have found out. That son is the man who sleeps beneath our roof to-night—Lieutenant St. Georges."
"But how? How? How?"
"Again, listen. For years I sought to find him, made inquiries in every quarter I could think of, asked—quietly and cautiously—of all who might by chance possess any information. Then, at last, it came—from the quarter least to be imagined. From your half-brother."
"Raoul?"
"Ay, Raoul, your father's heir—also heir to the fortune of the Duc de Vannes, as all the world thought and still thinks. He came to me one day—three months ago—when he had been privately to Paris; for what reason I know not, although I know that his visit was a secret one, since he had not been presented to the king. He came in, I say, and standing before me, he said, 'Madame, who is Monsieur St. Georges?' I answered that I had never heard of the gentleman before, to which he replied: ''Tis strange, madame. He is an officer of the Régiment de Nivernois. And his commission was given him by the king at the request of your late—friend, shall I say?—the Duc de Vannes!'
"Aurélie, I fell to trembling then, for I thought to myself, 'I have found his son.' De Vannes had told me that son was being educated for his own profession of arms—nay, more, that he sought for him a commission from the king. Meanwhile, Raoul was watching me carefully, so that I disguised as best I could my agitation, while I replied: 'It seems to me you need not to demand information of me. You know of Monsieur St. Georges's existence—of the calling he follows. On my part, I have never heard of him before!' 'Nor perhaps,' he replied, 'ever will again!' and with that he left me."
"It must be the man," Mademoiselle de Roquemaure murmured. "It must be he."
"It is he," the marquise replied emphatically. "It is he. As he stood before me to-night I saw his father in his eyes, in his glance—nay, in his bearing. That man is the son of De Vannes—is the De Vannes himself. And if more proof was wanted, is it not forthcoming when we have learned that not only his life, but the life of his child, is thrust against? His father died without a will, without naming him; your father was therefore the heir, and—after him—your brother Raoul. In another year, when he is thirty, De Vannes's wealth is his, if—if," and her eyes glistened as she spoke, "no direct heir bars the way. You understand?"