The mother stood behind, tearless, with a glitter in her eyes which was almost fierce. Miss Susan did not venture to do more than give her one hurried glance, to which she replied with a gleam of fury, clasping her hands together. Was it fury? Miss Susan thought so, and shrank for a moment, not quite able to understand the feelings of the other woman who had not clearly understood her, yet who now seemed to address to her a look of wild reproach.
“And my poor wife,” went on the old shopkeeper, “for her it will be an even still more happy—Tu es contente, bien contente, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, mon ami,” said the woman, turning her back to him, with once more a glance from which Miss Susan shrank.
“Ah, madame, excuse her; she cannot speak; it is a joy too much,” he cried, drying his old eyes.
Miss Susan felt herself constrained and drawn on by the excitement of the moment, and urged by the silence of the other woman, who was as much involved as she.
“My poor boy will have a sadder lot even than yours,” she said; “he is dying too young even to hope for any of the joys of life. There is neither wife nor child possible for Herbert.” The tears rushed to her eyes as she spoke. Heaven help her! she had availed herself, as it were, of nature and affection to help her to commit her sin with more ease and apparent security. She had taken advantage of poor Herbert in order to wake those tears which gave her credit in the eyes of the unsuspecting stranger. In the midst of her excitement and feverish sense of life, a sudden chill struck at her heart. Had she come to this debasement so soon? Was it possible that in such an emergency she had made capital and stock-in-trade of her dying boy? This reflection was not put into words, but flashed through her with one of those poignant instantaneous cuts and thrusts which men and women are subject to, invisibly to all the world. M. Austin, forgetting his respect in sympathy, held out his hand to her to press hers with a profound and tender feeling which went to Miss Susan’s heart; but she had the courage to return the pressure before she dropped his bond hastily (he thought in English pride and reserve), and, making a visible effort to suppress her emotion, continued, “After this discovery, I suppose your bargain with Mr. Farrel-Austin, who took such an advantage of you, is at an end at once?”
“Speak French,” said Madame Austin, with gloom on her countenance; “I do not understand your English.”
“Mon amie, you are a little abrupt. Forgive her, madame; it is the excitation—the joy. In women the nerves are so much allied with the sentiments,” said the old shopkeeper, feeling himself, like all men, qualified to generalize on this subject. Then he added with dignity, “I promised only for myself. My old companion and me—we felt no desire to be more rich, to enter upon another life; but at present it is different. If there comes an inheritor,” he added, with a gleam of light over his face, “who shall be born to this wealth, who can be educated for it, who will be happy in it, and great and prosperous—ah, madame, permit that I thank you again! Yes, it is you who have revealed the goodness of God to me. I should not have been so happy to-day but for you.”
Miss Susan interrupted him almost abruptly. The sombre shadow on Madame Austin’s countenance began to affect her in spite of herself. “Will you write to him,” she said, “or would you wish me to explain for you? I shall see him on my return.”
“Still English,” said Madame Austin, “when I say that I do not understand it! I wish to understand what is said.”