"You know," said Adolphus, with a shrug, "your father is an officer, and he cannot now leave his post. Are you going to take your mother along with you?"
He said these words at a venture, not certain of his ground. He was not kept in suspense long.
"My mother must not leave you," answered Elizabeth, greatly agitated, and yet speaking strongly, as one whose will exceeded her emotion.
"Then you go alone?" asked Adolphus, shortly. He could not understand her, and was thoroughly vexed that he could not; mysteries were not for him. "What is the matter? is it the prison? Wife!" he turned to Pauline, but, as he looked at her, his perplexity seemed to increase, as did his impatience also.
Wife and daughter evidently were not in league against him; she, the mother of his child, shared his anxiety and doubt. Tears were in her eyes, and he had only been impatient!—she had passed so quickly to an apprehension that was grievous, Adolphus stood the image of dismay. Those three, so entirely one, seemed to have been thrust apart by a resistless evil Fate who had some malignant purpose to serve.
Not now for the first time did Pauline see that the young face before her was pale, and grave with a gravity once unknown to it. It might be, that, for the first time, she was asking herself outright if this prison-life was to serve Elizabeth as it had served the wife of Laval,—but not for the first time was she now visited by a foreboding that pointed to this fear.
"It is the prison," said she.
"Elizabeth, is it so? Is this house going to be the death of you?" asked Montier, abruptly,—referring the point with stern authority, to the last person who would be likely to acknowledge the danger of which he spoke.
"If you think so, papa and mamma, I must give up the voyage, just to prove that you are mistaken," answered she.
"Look at her, Adolphus!" said Pauline; "remember what she was a year ago! She's not the same now. I can see it. Strange if I could not! Young people are different from old. I thought this place would never seem like home to me, but I found out my mistake."