A deep sigh stirred her, quickening in him the knowledge that since she had kissed his hand she had listened without breathing. She murmured now:
"Poor, dearest, best father! How old was I when she——"
He said tenderly:
"Let me see ... it was the August of 1856; thou hadst five years, and thy curls were as soft and as yellow as chicken-down. Thy mother used to say, Juliette will never be black like me!"
That disloyal mother had been the darkest of brunettes, ivory-skinned, and ebon-haired, with eyes of tawny wine-color, and the tall, lithe, exuberant form of a goddess of Grecian myth. To question the man she had deserted with regard to his betrayer seemed hideous, and yet... Juliette strung herself to the effort, faltering:
"And for whom...? with whom...? Do not tell me if it costs thee too much!"
His comprehension was instant. Very coldly the answer came:
"He was a personage of rank in his own country. A military attaché of the Prussian Embassy in Paris. They had met at one of the Imperial receptions at the Tuileries."
"Is he alive?"
The whispered words might have been shrieked in his ear, such a leap of the heart and such a thrilling of the nerves responded. He rose to his feet and said sternly, not looking at his daughter, but directly at the wall before him: