Mysteries of Paris Volume II Part 31

"Speak!"

"This woman has just been here; she was below just now. She told me she knew it was I who gave up the child."

"Malediction! who could have told her? Tournemine is at the galleys."

"I denied everything, treating her as a liar. But she maintains that she has found this child again, now grown up; that she knows where she is, and that it only depends upon herself to discover everything."

"Is h.e.l.l unchained against me to-day?" cried the notary, in a fit of rage that rendered him hideous.

"What shall be said to the woman? What must we promise, to keep her silent?"

"Does she look as if she were poor?"

"As I treated her like a beggar, she shook her reticule--there was money in it."

"And she knows where this young girl is now?"

"She declares she knows."

"And she is the daughter of Countess M'Gregor!" said the notary to himself, "who just now offered me so much to say that her child was not dead! And the child lives. I can restore her to her! Yes; but this false certificate of death--if any inquiry is made, I am lost! This crime may put them on the scent of others." After a moment's thought, he said to Madame Seraphin, "This one-eyed woman knows where the girl is?"

"Yes."

"And this woman will return to-morrow?"

"To-morrow."

"Write to Polidori to be here to-night at nine o'clock."

"Do you mean to get rid of the girl and the old woman? It will be too much for one time, Ferrand!"

"I tell you to write to Folidori to be here to-night by nine o'clock."

At the close of this day, Rudolph said to Murphy, who had not been able to see the notary, "Let M. de Graun send a courtier off at once.

Cicily must be in Paris in six days."

"Once more that infernal she-devil! the execrable wife of poor David, as handsome as she is infamous! For what good, your highness?"

"For what good, Sir Walter? In a month's time you may ask this question of the notary, Jacques Ferrand."

CHAPTER X.

DENUNCIATION.

About ten o'clock in the evening of the day on which Fleur-de-Marie had been carried off by Screech-owl and the Schoolmaster, a man on horseback arrived at the farm, coming, as he said, on the part of Rudolph, to rea.s.sure Mrs. George as to the disappearance of her young _protegee_, who would return to her in a few days. For several very important reasons, added this man, Rudolph begged Mrs. George, in the event of her having anything to send him, not to write him at Paris, but to hand the letter to the courier, who would take charge of it.

This courier was an emissary of Sarah's. By this she tranquilized Mrs.

George, and r.e.t.a.r.ded thus for some days the moment when Rudolph must hear of the abduction. In this interval, Sarah hoped to force the notary to favor the unworthy scheme of which we have spoken. This was not all. Sarah wished also to get rid of Madame d'Harville, who inspired her with serious fears, and who would have been lost but for Rudolph's rescue.

On the day when the marquis had followed his wife to the house in the Rue du Temple, where she was to meet Charles Robert, but where Rudolph led her to the Morels, and thus changed the a.s.signation into a call in charity, Sarah's brother Tom went there, easily set Mrs. Pipelet jabbering, and learned that a young lady, on the point of being surprised by her husband, had been saved, thanks to a lodger in the house named Rudolph. Informed of this circ.u.mstance, Sarah, possessing no material proof of the rendezvous that Lady d'Harville had given to Charles Robert, conceived another odious plan. It was concocted to send an anonymous letter to the marquis, in order to effect a complete rupture between him and Rudolph, or, at least, to make the marquis so suspicious as to forbid any further intercourse between the prince and his wife.

This letter was thus couched:

"You have been deceived most shamefully. The other day, your wife, advised that you were following her, pretended an imaginary visit of charity; she went to meet a very _august personage_, who has hired in the Rue du Temple a room in the fourth story, under the name of Rudolph. If you doubt these facts, strange as they may appear, go to the Rue du Temple, No. 17, and inform yourself; paint to yourself the features of the _august person_ spoken of, and you will easily acknowledge that you are the most credulous, good-natured husband who has ever been so _sovereignly_ deceived. Do not neglect this advice; otherwise it will be supposed that you, also are too much.

"THE FRIEND OF PRINCES."

This note was put in the post at five o'clock by Sarah, on the day of her interview with the notary. The same evening, Rudolph went to pay a visit to a foreign emba.s.sy: after which it was his intention to go to Madame d'Harville's to announce to her that he had found a charitable intrigue worthy of her. We will conduct the reader to Madame d'Harville's. It will be seen, from the following conversation, that this young lady, in showing herself generous and compa.s.sionate towards her husband, whom she had until then treated with extreme coldness, followed already the n.o.ble counsels of Rudolph.

The marquis and his wife had just left the table; the scene pa.s.sed in the little saloon of which we have spoken; the expression of Clemence d'Harville was affectionate and kind; D'Harville seemed less sad than usual. He had not yet received the now infamous letter from Sarah.

"What are you going to do to-night?" said he, mechanically, to his wife.

"I shall not go out; pray what are your plans?"

"I do not know," answered he, with a sigh. "Society is insupportable to me. I will pa.s.s this evening, like so many other evenings, alone."

"Why alone, since I am not going out?"

M. d'Harville looked at his wife with surprise. "Doubtless, but--"

"Well?"

"I know that you often prefer solitude when you do not go out."

"Yes; but as I am very capricious," said Clemence, smiling, "at present I prefer to partake my solitude with you, if it is agreeable to you."

"Really," cried D'Harville, with emotion, "how kind you are to antic.i.p.ate what I dared not express."

"Do you know, dear, that your astonishment has almost an air of reproach?"

"A reproach? Oh, no, no! not after my unjust and cruel suspicions the other day. To find you so forgiving, it is, I confess, a surprise for me; but a surprise the most delightful."

"Let us forget the past," said she to her husband, with an angelic smile.

"Clemence, can you forget?" answered he, sadly. "Have I not dared to suspect you? To tell you to what extremity a blind jealousy has impelled me? But what is all this compared to other wrongs, still greater, more irreparable?"

"Let us forget the past, I say," repeated Clemence, restraining her emotion.

"What do I hear? The past also--can you forget it?"

"I hope to do so."