Before the answer could be given the door leading into the drawing-room from the staircase was violently flung open, and Madame Danville—her hair in disorder, her face in its colorless terror looking like the very counterpart of her son’s—appeared on the threshold, with the old man Dubois and a group of amazed and startled servants behind her.
“For God’s sake, don’t sign! for God’s sake, come away!” she cried. “I have seen your wife—in the spirit, or in the flesh, I know not which—but I have seen her. Charles! Charles! as true as Heaven is above us, I have seen your wife!”
“You have seen her in the flesh, living and breathing as you see her brother yonder,” said a firm, quiet voice, from among the servants on the landing outside.
“Let that man enter, whoever he is!” cried the general.
Lomaque passed Madame Danville on the threshold. She trembled as he brushed by her; then, supporting herself by the wall, followed him a few paces into the room. She looked first at her son—after that, at Trudaine—after that back again at her son. Something in her presence silenced every one. There fell a sudden stillness over all the assembly—a stillness so deep that the eager, frightened whispering, and sharp rustling of dresses among the women in the library, became audible from the other side of the closed door.
“Charles,” she said, slowly advancing; “why do you look—” She stopped, and fixed her eyes again on her son more earnestly than before; then turned them suddenly on Trudaine. “You are looking at my son, sir,” she said, “and I see contempt in your face. By what right do you insult a man whose grateful sense of his mother’s obligations to you made him risk his life for the saving of yours and your sister’s? By what right have you kept the escape of my son’s wife from death by the guillotine—an escape which, for all I know to the contrary, his generous exertions were instrumental in effecting—a secret from my son? By what right, I demand to know, has your treacherous secrecy placed us in such a position as we now stand in before the master of this house?”
An expression of sorrow and pity passed over Trudaine’s face while she spoke. He retired a few steps, and gave her no answer. The general looked at him with eager curiosity, and, dropping his hold of Danville’s arm, seemed about to speak; but Lomaque stepped forward at the same time, and held up his hand to claim attention.
“I think I shall express the wishes of Citizen Trudaine,” he said, addressing Madame Danville, “if I recommend this lady not to press for too public an answer to her questions.”
“Pray who are you, sir, who take it on yourself to advise me?” she retorted, haughtily. “I have nothing to say to you, except that I repeat those questions, and that I insist on their being answered.”
“Who is this man?” asked the general, addressing Trudaine, and pointing to Lomaque.