And, with a loud cry, he strode forward. A moment later his arms were around her, her head was upon his breast.
"My wife! My wife!" he cried, "ah, my wife! Thank God, I have found you."
* * * * * *
Whatever havoc those sufferings and tribulations might have wrought upon Laure no sign was given by her husband that he perceived them. Instead, as hour after hour went by and still she lay in his arms sobbing in her happiness, she learnt that to him she was as beautiful as in the first hour he had cast his eyes upon her; that, always, even though never more the fair rose and white should return to her complexion, nor the mark left by the hateful carcan become effaced, she would be to him the one woman in all the world. That he had observed that devilish mark, and understood the story it told, she perceived at once, as again and again he kissed the ring upon her neck which the iron had stamped in, while murmuring words of love and deep affection as he did so. But he heeded it no more than he did the sunburn upon her face and throat and breast, the hollowness of her eyes or the emaciation of her frame. All, all of her beauty would come back amidst the pine-scented breezes and mountain air of the land to which he would bear her, while she was surrounded, as she should be, by everything that wealth and happiness could offer.
Wherefore she could only murmur again and again:
"What I feared most of all was that you deemed me heartless and intriguing, that I had used you only as a means to my own end. Walter, my love, my husband, I feared that I was banished from your heart. I feared it even as I recognised that I had loved you from the first."
"That will be," he whispered back, "only when my heart has ceased to beat."
So the day drew on and the sun had left the front of the house; over the street, up which none came, and in which no footfall was heard--over which, indeed, there reigned a silence as of death--the shadows of the evening began to creep, ere they had told each other all. Laure had narrated Desparre's visit to the Rue de la Dauphine, far away in northern Paris, as well as everything that had befallen her since she was cast into prison as a would-be murderess. Walter, too, had told the tale of his misery when he returned to his apartments, his discovery of what had been her fate, his instant departure for this stricken city, and the encounter with Desparre.
"He here!" she had exclaimed, almost affrighted at the thought, in spite of her husband's statement that, even though Desparre should not be struck for death, he still was harmless for further injury, "what could have brought him here? What!"
That Walter could not answer this question is certain; but that he could divine how, in some way, Desparre must have learnt who and what the woman was whom he had condemned to such fiendish punishment, he felt assured. But he had vowed to himself that this fact should never be made known to Laure; she must never learn that it was from her own father's hand that the blow had fallen which consigned her to the horrors of the past months. There was only one man who, if he were still alive, could tell her now--since he was resolved that Desparre should never again stand in her presence, nor be face to face with her--only one, Vandecque. But it was not likely that Laure and he would ever meet again. Had not the beggar, the miserable, shrinking wretch whom he had saved from a beating in Paris, and who had informed him of all, told him, too, that Desparre had made sure of Vandecque and had silenced him for ever? No more was it likely that she and that scoundrel would meet again than that she and Desparre would do so.