One had left School, however, and one was glad of it. To go back with that tragic secret locked in one's bosom, and mingle with fortunate girls whose mothers were good women, happily alive or safely in Paradise, how could one have borne that?
A well-known footstep outside the door of her room, which opened from the little salon, and a gentle rustling sent a shiver through her. When the step moved away with its soldierly jingle of spurs accompanying it, De Bayard's daughter sat up in bed and kissed both hands to him, passionately; stretching out her arms with a wide gesture as though something of the maternal mingled with her love for him now.... When "Lights Out" sounded, and the gas was extinguished, and no line of yellow showed under the door, and the footsteps retreated and his door shut upon them, Juliette crept out of bed, lighted the candle, and picked up the scrap of paper that had been pushed across her threshold by the strong, beloved hand.
It proved to be a note dated that day, and addressed from the Tessier's house in the Rue de Provence, in Madame's angular, spidery caligraphy. Felicitations to her dear friend on the safe return of his cherished one were followed by regrets. "My Charles, alas! will be detained in Belgium at least until the Mardigras. The meeting of these dear young people must necessarily be deferred until that date. But to-morrow being the Feast of Saint Polycarpe, possibly M. le Colonel would bring Mademoiselle to visit a friend, old and most affectionate, punctually at the hour of one midi?" With tender remembrances the note concluded. Beneath the signature—Marie-Anastasie Tessier—M. le Colonel had scrawled in pencil the curt intimation: "Arranged.—H.A.A. de B."
Knowing Charles safely bestowed in Belgium, Juliette sank back upon her pillow, and soon was calmly sleeping between her two great hair-plaits. But slippered footsteps patroled the Colonel's room until gray dawn showed between the slits of the window-shutters, and the heavy sighs and muttered words that broke from him would have wrung his daughter's faithful heart. Sleepless and haggard, the first pale beams of January daylight found him still pacing his brown-striped drugget, a letter—the cause of his own and another's misery,—crushed in his strong right hand:
"555, AVENUE DE L'ALMA, PARIS,
"December 18, 1869.
"MONSIEUR,
"Acting upon instructions received from the senior partner of the Berlin branch of our firm, we beg to acknowledge your reply to his communication of the 7th instant, and must point out to you that the attitude you assume with regard to our client is equally unjust and indefensible. No legal remedy was sought by you for the injuries you allege that you sustained through the infidelity of the lady who until the autumn of 1856 occupied—and without reproach—the position of your wife.
"Further, during the years of her absence from your side, she has neither asked nor received from you any monetary payments toward her support and maintenance, facts which certainly appear to suggest consent and knowledge upon your part. You may further be aware that His deceased Excellency, Count Maximilian von Schön-Valverden, late junior military attaché to the Prussian General Staff, fully atoned for an indiscretion of his earlier years, by making an ample settlement upon Madame de Bayard; and that she is now in a position to render liberal assistance to relatives whom Fortune has not dowered with ample means.
"Under the circumstances, we have advised our client, whose natural affection for her daughter strongly urges her to assert her maternal rights to the society of Mademoiselle de Bayard, to enforce her claim by the reëstablishment of personal influence.
"The young lady in question is still unmarried, under age, and therefore subject to maternal authority; and our client does not disguise her hope that, by awakening the long silent chords of filial tenderness, she may gain a powerful advocate upon the side of reconciliation, reunion, and that unblemished and peaceful happiness which is only to be found by the domestic fireside.