"You lie!" Renée pushed her back.
"I?" Renée did not reply, but looked sadly and gently into Noémi's eyes.
Renée doubted no longer. She was silent for a moment; she felt almost the duties of a mother towards this child.
In the evening Henri was surprised to find his sister waiting in his room. She approached the subject of his impending marriage, and implored him, by his love for her, not to give up his name, and to break off the match.
"Are you mad? Enough of this!"
Renée fixed her eyes upon her brother.
"Noémi has told me--everything!"
Her cheeks flushed, Henri turned deathly pale.
"My dear," he said, with a shaky voice, "you interfere in things which do not concern you. A young girl--" Then seizing her hand, he pointed towards the door, and said, "Go!"
Renée was ill for a week, and Henri, knowing the cause, did his best to alleviate her suffering. Still, a coldness remained between them. He understood that she had forgiven the brother, but not the man. One day she accompanied Henri to town and went with him to the Record Office, where he had to make some inquiries about the legality of adopting his own name. While he was questioning the keeper, she overheard two clerks discuss her brother and his claim. "He thinks the Villacourt family is extinct. But he is misinformed, although they have gone down in the world. In fact, I know the heir to the title--a M. Boisjorand with whom I once had a fight when we were boys. They lived in the forest of the Croix-du-Soldat, near St. Mihiel, at La Motte-Noire." Renée fixed these names in her mind.