It was as if a thunderbolt struck de Lotbinière.
"Who spoke to you of that?" he exclaimed hastily.
"Do you hear?" Cyrène cried excitedly, turning to La Maréchale. "Do you hear this admission of murder?"
"It was no murder!" de Lotbinière interrupted, trembling with feeling.
"You apparently wish some finer term to describe it," she retorted. "Sir, any charges made to me against my affianced must be supported by individuals more free of terrible records. I shall trust his innocence through eternity." And with these words, uttered frigidly, she left the room, the Maréchale looking after her astonished.
Now Germain, having fled from Troyes, came to the hôtel. He entered one of the great salons, and, miserable and desperate, sent up his name to Cyrène for a last interview. While he waited to be ushered up, to his surprise, she herself appeared at the end of the salon, advancing with a tearful expression. The sight of her, dragged down into his pit of misery, sent him distracted. All was forgotten for a few moments, as she tearfully clasped him in her arms and murmured—
"Germain, you are no adventurer, no Sillon. Though all the world be against you, I shall die with you."
Intoxicated with surprise that she did not repel him, yet overcome with the belief that it was to be their last embrace, he lost himself for the time in mingled remorse and mad bliss. They clung to each other as so many others have clung in those short moments which are the attar of a lifetime. At length he grew more conscious, and the delirium of holding that face and golden hair to his breast triumphed over the pain of guilt. At that moment they simultaneously perceived a shadow and started.
"Baroness," said a severe voice, "you make me blush for my house."
Cyrène and Germain sprang apart in alarm.