"Mother, speak to me," I urged, "trust yourself to me; let me grieve with you, perhaps I may help you. It is so cruel for me that I must take you by surprise in order to see your tears."
I went on, pressing her by my questions and my complaining. What then did I hope to tear from those lips which quivered but yet kept silence? At any price I would know; I was in no state to endure fresh mysteries, and I was certain that my stepfather was somehow concerned in this inexplicable trouble, for it was only he and I who so deeply moved that woman's heart of hers. She was not thus troubled on account of me, she had just told me so; the cause of her grief must have reference to him, and it was not his health. Had she too made any discovery? Had the terrible suspicion crossed her mind also? At the mere idea a burning fever seized upon me; I insisted and insisted again. I felt that she was yielding, if it were only by the leaning of her head towards me, the passing of her trembling hand over my hair, and the quickening of her breath.
"If I were sure," said she at length, "that this secret would die with you and me."
"Oh! mother!" I exclaimed, in so reproachful a tone that the blood flew to her cheeks. Perhaps this little betrayal of shame decided her, she pressed a lingering kiss on my forehead, as though she would have effaced the frown which her unjust distrust had set there.
"Forgive me, my André," she said, "I was wrong. In whom should I trust, to whom confide this thing, except to you? From whom ask counsel?" And then she went on as though she were speaking to herself, "If he were ever to apply to him?"
"He! Whom?"
"André, will you swear to me by your love for me, that you will never, you understand me, never, make the least allusion to what I am going to tell you?"
"Mother!" I replied, in the same tone of reproach, and then added at once, to draw her on, "I give you my word of honour!"
"Nor——" she did not pronounce a name, but she pointed anew to the door of the sick man's room.
"Never."