But from time to time a deeper and more sombre shade spread over her eyes, an expression more desolate fixed itself on her lips. When the caressing and persuasive voice of her future father-in-law ceased to be heard, she sadly bent her head, and replied:
“Alas! Monsieur Maubars, I see we can never again understand each other. I am not free, as you appear to think. What my dear and worthy protectress would have done, I must do for her.”
“But, my child, reflect: you cannot sacrifice your little fortune.”
“And this fortune, to whom do I owe it, then—I, a poor, abandoned orphan, who, without the generous protection of this inestimable friend, would have been sent in years gone by where you would place these poor infirm people—in a hospital. Oh! my good Monsieur Maubars, if my benefactress had in dying left some debt of honor that I should pay, would you advise me to cancel the obligation—you who are so just and honorable?”
“But, dear young lady, the case is different; your excessive delicacy leads you astray.”
“It is only different in one respect: it is more grave and solemn. This is a sacred debt that Madame de Guers has contracted toward God and toward the poor, to satisfy the yearning of her soul. To-day this debt is transmitted to me. I recognize it; I receive it with the rest of her heritage; I promise to use, if necessary, all my resources, all my time, all my strength to pay it as I should.”
The young girl, pale though resolute, rose in pronouncing these words, and extended her little hand, that had ceased to tremble, as if she called upon all the strangers assembled to witness her irrevocable decision, her generous determination. The old
frequenters of the mansion could scarcely recognize her: she seemed to have grown taller, ripened in a moment, and was transfigured. Her former sweetness, so timid and charming, did not abandon her, but there mingled in it an expression of invincible courage and inflexible integrity; the weak and feeble child had disappeared, and in her place appeared a woman—loyal, intrepid, resigned, ready for every devotion, for every sacrifice, even of the oldest and most cherished affections of her heart.
M. Maubars was undeceived; it was with an expression evidently of extreme surprise and marked discontent that he fell back a few steps and bent his whitened head: “I persist in hoping, mademoiselle, that you will still reflect,” said he, in a tone impressed with remarkable coldness. “Otherwise, you understand, without doubt, our projects must undergo same modification. Consider that such obstinacy on your part is a most unhappy precedent for the well-being and peace of your future household.”
At this brutal menace, at this the saddest moment, perhaps, of her life, Valentine became still paler and her look more sombre, but she neither trembled nor flinched, accepting without a murmur and in silence all the bitterness of the duty she had just embraced. Only, by an old and tender habit of childhood, with the remains of a hope perhaps, her gaze, more eloquent and earnest than ever, was fixed upon Alfred—the friend, the betrothed, whom, for so long a time, she had been accustomed to consult in any sadness or disquietude. But Alfred, before the mute anguish of this regard, was not moved. He bore with his father an air of gravity and dissatisfaction.