“Pierre,” she said, lifting her dry, heavy eyes appealingly to him, and speaking like a sick child which wants to be petted; “Pierre, I am strangely shaken by this news, because I do not understand why Christine should wish to hide her identity from me, when she knew how I wanted to find her. It looks as if there was something which she wished to keep from me—something wrong in her life after she left us—and was married to M. La Rue. I had so much faith in and love for her, and now—oh, Pierre, it makes me cold, and sick, and faint. Forget that I am a woman; try and fancy me a little girl again, as I was when you first came to Chateau des Fleurs, and take me up and carry me to the couch. I could not walk there to save my life, for the strength has all gone from my body.”
Pierre had carried her in his arms many a time in the years gone by, and now he took her up gently, and laying her upon the couch, brought a pillow for her, and fixed it under her head, and covered her with her shawl, and put fresh coal on the grate, for the November night was cold and chill, and outside the first snow of the season was beginning to fall.
“Now sit down by me, Pierre,” she continued “and rub my hands, they are so numb and lifeless, and let me talk to you of the olden time, when we lived in the country and were so very happy.”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” Pierre said sitting down beside her and rubbing and chafing the limp white fingers which seemed to have no vitality in them.
“Pierre,” she began, “we were so happy when papa was alive; he was so good. He was always kind to you, was he not?”
“Yes, always.”
“And he was good to everybody, Pierre?”
“Yes everybody.”
“And—and—you were with him in places where he would be under less restraint than when with me, and you think he had as few faults as most men, I am sure?”
“He had not a single fault,” Pierre said, emphatically, lying easily and unhesitatingly, thinking the end justified the means.