She went on smoothing his hair steadily.
“Some time soon the dream will come true,” she said. “Do the best you can. Do justice to the wronged. Come away with me, and we will hide ourselves somewhere in the world, and try to find peace for the days that are left. And by-and-by, Lawrence, will come the day when we shall both be as little children again, and all our terrible burdens will slip off. You must do justice to the wronged.”
“In some way, yes!” he said. “I have tried to think. He must be saved. But I cannot go away. Do you remember ever having been afraid to go up-stairs in the dark, of having felt sure that there was some one behind just ready to grasp you, till you screamed out in [pg 095] terror? It would be like that with me. If once I turn my back on this place, my life will become a crazy flight.”
“The world is wide,” she urged, “and there are safe places enough in it. Besides, money can buy anything; and he has forgiven you. He will screen you.”
“My mother!” he exclaimed. “Who will screen and save her? I will not destroy her, Annette. No, everybody in the world may perish first. I never will destroy my mother. I have done harm enough.”
“He will die in prison,” she whispered. “He has sent to Germany for help, and it did him no good. He has demanded a new trial, and there was not enough to justify them in granting it. He is in a net from which there seems to be no escape. They say that he will die.”
“You want to make me crazy!” her husband cried out, pushing her fiercely from him. “Go away! You are worse than the rest.”
There was no way but to yield to him. “Well, well, Lawrence! I will try to think of some other means.”
The season had reached early spring, and one tempestuous evening in March, as F. Chevreuse sat at home, making up some church accounts, feeling quite sure that he should not be interrupted, he heard the street-door softly open and shut, then a tap at the door of the room.
“Strange that Jane should leave that street-door unlocked!” he thought, and at the same moment heard the servant coming up-stairs from the kitchen. Her quick ear had caught the sound, and she, too, was wondering how she could have omitted to fasten the house up.