“Franceline was, you know, very ill just then; she could eat nothing. I fancied these might tempt her, so I slipped a couple of them into my pockets with some bonbons. This was why I would not turn them out. I was ashamed to exhibit my poverty to all those men, especially to that stranger who had been taunting me with it; I would not let him see what a poor devil I was, and to what straits poverty drove me to get food for my sick child.”
“My poor Raymond!” was all Sir Simon could say, and he grasped his hand.
“Then you remember I came back? I was rushing home when it occurred to me that I had done a mad thing; so I threw away the pâtés and the bonbons, and went back and made a fool of myself, as you know. I think I must have been mad. I know I had been taking a great deal of wine to keep me up; anyhow, I did not reflect, until I saw the effect of my presence, what a preposterous act it
was, and that you should have been all fools to see any proof of my innocence in it.”
“You might have trusted me,” said Sir Simon reproachfully. “I would have believed you—I did believe you in spite of my senses. I came to the conclusion you were, as you say, either mad or drunk, and had taken it unawares. Why didn’t you write to me?”
“I did. I wrote you a full account of it all; but, as ill-luck had it, your letter telling me to send back the ring arrived before mine left. I was so incensed at your suspecting me that I tore up the letter. I was a fool, of course; but you know of old that pride is my weak point. It was not until I was struck down by illness, and brought face to face with death, and with the thought that I was going to leave my child friendless in the world with a dishonored name, that I resolved to sacrifice it, and for her sake to write to you and ask you to take charge of her and do what you could to clear my memory from the stain that my own vanity and folly had fixed upon it. Father Henwick wrote to you to this effect in my name on Tuesday. The letter is lying at your bankers’.”
“I was as much to blame as you. I ought to have known you better than to mistrust you; I ought to have known there must be some mistake in it,” said Sir Simon, rising and going to the window. “I ought to have written to you to ask you for an explanation, and so I was always intending to do; but what with the excitement of Clide’s finding his—of his finding out my difficulties and so on,” he continued, checking himself in time before the murder was out, “and then poor, dear
Lady Rebecca’s telegraphing for me, I nearly lost my head, and kept putting off writing from day to day, in hopes that you would write.”
“Is monsieur going to stay to tea? Because, if so, it is time I began the omelette,” said Angélique, following Franceline into the room, carrying a tray with something on it for M. de la Bourbonais.
But Sir Simon said he must be going that very minute. How the time had flown, and he had so many things to see to at the Court! Raymond was rather exhausted when his friend left, but he slept sounder that night than he had done for a long time.