He bowed his head in his hands. Judgment had at last descended on him for the sins of his youth; for he had erred grievously. All the misery he had endured since then had been but a preparation for the blow that had now fallen. It would be easy to go to her to-morrow and say: “I deceived you last night. The woman you saw was your mother.” But he knew he would never be able to say it. He must pay the great penalty.
He paid it the next day when he called humbly to see her. She received him dutifully and gave him her cheek to kiss, but he felt her shrink from him and read the anguished condemnation in her eyes. He saw, too, for he was quick at such things, how her glance took in, for the first time in her life, his worn black clothes, his frayed linen, his genteel shabbiness, a grotesque contrast to the air of wealth in which she found herself. And he knew that she had no mean thoughts but was pierced to the heart by the discovery; for she turned her head aside and bit her lip, so that he should not guess.
“I should like to tell you what I have done,” said he, after some desultory and embarrassed talk about Lucilla. “I have telegraphed to Chartres and Brantôme to say that you are safe and sound, and I have written to your Uncle Gaspard about Lucien Viriot. You will never hear of the matter again, unless your Aunt Clothilde goes to Brantôme, which I very much doubt.”
“Thank you, father,” said Félise, and the commonplace words sounded cold in her ears. She was delivered, she knew, from the nightmare of the past few weeks; but she found little joy in her freedom. Then she asked:
“Have you told Uncle Gaspard why I ran away from Aunt Clothilde?”
“Enough, dear, for him to understand. He will ask you no questions, so you needn’t tell him anything.”
“Won’t that be ungrateful? I have treated him ungratefully enough already.”
Fortinbras stretched out his hand to lay it caressingly on her head, as he had done all her life, but, remembering, withdrew it, with a sigh.
“Your uncle is the best and truest man I have ever met,” said he. “And he loves you dearly and you love him—and with love ingratitude can’t exist. Tell him whatever you find in your heart. But there is one thing you need never tell him—what you saw in the Rue Maugrabine last night. I have done so already. In this way there will be nothing secret between you.”
She sat with tense young face, looking at her hands. Again she saw the squalid virago. She would see her till her dying day. To no one on earth could she speak of her.