"Recall Ducaire? Remember her father? Oh! Dieu des Dieux, if they should do that, if there should be one among those who surround her, if she still lives, who could do so! If there is but one who should tell her----"
"What, Baville?"
"No, no, no!" he whispered. "No, no! If so--yet it can not be!--but if it is, if there is any still living to tell her that, then better she be dead. Better dead than bear it."
"Husband," Madame l'Intendante said, "I know now, something tells me--alas! alas! ever have I suspected it, feared it," and she wrung her hands; "you have deceived me, trifled with me from the first. Baville, is it you? Are you in solemn truth her father? Is Ducaire another name, known once in the far-off past, for Baville? Would she be better dead than alive to learn that? Answer me."
"No," he said, "no; you do not understand, can not understand; must not know yet. But I am innocent of that wrong to you. I swear it. And Alice, my wife," he continued as he bent over her and kissed her brow, "Alice, my love, if you knew all you would pity me. Alice, I swear it to you--swear that it is not what you think."
Then, as again he kissed her, he murmured the old French proverb:
"Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner," adding, "Oh, believe in me, counsel me, my wife."
[CHAPTER XX.]
WHAT IS THIS MYSTERY?
The swallows were gone--a month earlier in this mountainous region than in the rest of the golden south of France. Below, the corn had fallen ungathered from its stalks, since of those who remained in the valleys, and faithful to the iron rule of Baville, none dared reap it, for fear that, while doing so, from its midst might spring up a body of the dreaded Camisards. Already, too, high up in the mountains, the first flurries of snow had sprinkled the ground; autumn had come. And still Baville was no nearer to finding Urbaine, or to gathering news of whether she was alive or dead, than he had been before. Neither did he know what had become of the man who, he deemed, had betrayed her into his enemies' hands; who, he believed, had sent her to her death.