"He was bound to give her a pretty cage, the villain!" thought Sans-Cravate, as he drew near to the house, "hoping that she would like it and keep quiet. Ah! he forgot that she had a brother, and that that brother is Sans-Cravate!"
The messenger rang at the gate, and a peasant girl answered the bell.
"Where is my sister? take me to my sister!" cried Sans-Cravate, pushing the girl roughly before him. She stared at him with a terrified expression; she thought that she had to do with a robber, and she was on the point of shrieking and calling for help. But Adeline had already appeared in the doorway, for, whenever the bell rang, she flattered herself that Albert had returned; she ran forward when she saw that it was a man; then fell into Sans-Cravate's arms, murmuring in a voice stifled by joy and tears:
"It is my brother! Oh! he will not abandon me!"
Sans-Cravate gazed at his sister, whose pale, thin face had undergone so great a change in two months that he would have hesitated before recognizing her.
Adeline led him into a room on the ground floor, and there, gazing at him anew, with her eyes full of tears, she said:
"You are angry with me, of course; the last time I saw you, you made me promise to wait for you, and, in spite of that, I went away. But he came back—and when he learned that I had found you, and that you had gone to beg his father to forgive us, he cried out that that was ridiculous, that his father would be furious, that he would separate us or prevent him from seeing me, and that there was nothing for us to do but leave Paris at once; I believed him—he urged me so hard—and I went with him. We travelled a long time; I kept imploring him to write to you to find out if you had been successful with his father, but he told me we must wait. At last, about a week ago, he brought me here, to this house, told me that I should have everything I desired, left me a lot of money, and went away, saying that he would return soon; so I am always expecting him, and when you rang I thought it was he."
"Poor sister!" said Sans-Cravate, gazing mournfully at the girl, who tried to banish the traces of her tears with a smile; "you will wait for him in vain; he won't come back, the dastard! he has abandoned you, because he don't mean to repair his crime."
"O my God! can it be possible that Albert doesn't love me? It can't be true!"
"Oh! you had guessed it already, I am sure; your pale face, the terrible change in your features since our last meeting, your eyes all red from crying. Oh! you've been unhappy, you've been grieving a long time—that's easy to see."