Yet, all the same, she prayed (if, in truth, "prayer is the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed") that this stricken, forlorn woman might live through all the dangers that now encompassed her; that once more she might see the noble, chivalrous man who had married her, and be at last folded to his heart. While, even as she bent over Laure, the latter's lips parted, and it seemed as though she muttered the name "Walter."
"Ay", Marion muttered, "that is it. But where is he? Where? Oh! if he were but near to save her." Then she sighed deeply, as she would not have sighed could she have known that, already, the man whose name was in the sleeping and waking thoughts of each woman had reached the city, intent upon finding and rescuing his wife. His wife, whom he had loved since first his eyes fell on her fresh, pure beauty in the fœtid, sickly air of a Paris gambling hell.
For Walter Clarges knew all now. He knew of the deadly, damnable vengeance that Desparre had taken on the woman whom he would have married if she had not cast him off for another. Himself!
The knowledge had come to Clarges in that strange way, by one of those improbable incidents which are the jest of the ignorant scoffers who, in their self-importance and self-sufficient conceit, are unaware that actual life is more full of strange coincidences than the most subtle of plot-weavers has ever been able to devise. It had come to him when least to be expected--in such a manner and at such an opportune moment as to make the knowledge vouchsafed to him appear to be the work of Providence alone.
He had been passing one night at dusk down the street which led to that in which he dwelt, while musing, as ever, on whether she had been false to him--so bitterly, cruelly false as to make her memory and all regrets worthless--when his attention was attracted by an altercation going on between two men. One, a middle-aged, powerful-looking individual; the other, a beggar and almost old.
"Fie! Fie! Shame on you!" he said to the former, as he saw him strike the second with his cane. "For shame! The man is older than you, and apparently feeble. Put up your stick, bully, or seek a more suitable adversary."
"Monsieur's self to wit, perhaps," the aggressor sneered, yet ceasing his blows all the same. "Pray, does Monsieur regulate the laws by which gentlemen are to be molested by whining mendicants in the public places of Paris? This fellow has followed me with his petition for alms through a whole street."
"I will see that he does so no more," Walter Clarges said, quietly yet effectively. "At least, you shall beat him no further. You had best begone now," and there was something in his tone, as well as in his stalwart appearance, which induced the other to draw off and proceed on his way. Not, of course, without the usual protestations of "another time," and "when the opportunity should serve," and so forth. But, still, he went.
"What ails you?" asked Walter, gazing down now on the man whom he had saved from further drubbing. "Answer," he continued, seeing that the beggar turned his face away from him, and seemed, indeed, inclined to shuffle off after mumbling some thanks in his throat which were almost inaudible and entirely indistinct. "Answer me. And here is something to heal your aches from that fellow's cane." Whereon he held out a small silver coin to him.
But still the man made off, walking as swiftly as two lame feet would allow, and keeping at the same time his face turned from the other, as well as not seeing, or pretending not to see, the proffered coin.