“Is there any need, madame?” he asked her, his stoicism deeply shaken. “There is no occasion to take others into our confidence. This is for tonight alone. Tonight we are mother and son. Tomorrow we resume our former places, and, outwardly at least, forget.”
“Forget? Have you no heart, André-Louis?”
The question recalled him curiously to his attitude towards life—that histrionic attitude of his that he accounted true philosophy. Also he remembered what lay before them; and he realized that he must master not only himself but her; that to yield too far to sentiment at such a time might be the ruin of them all.
“It is a question propounded to me so often that it must contain the truth,” said he. “My rearing is to blame for that.”
She tightened her clutch about his neck even as he would have attempted to disengage himself from her embrace.
“You do not blame me for your rearing? Knowing all, as you do, André-Louis, you cannot altogether blame. You must be merciful to me. You must forgive me. You must! I had no choice.”
“When we know all of whatever it may be, we can never do anything but forgive, madame. That is the profoundest religious truth that was ever written. It contains, in fact, a whole religion—the noblest religion any man could have to guide him. I say this for your comfort, madame my mother.”
She sprang away from him with a startled cry. Beyond him in the shadows by the door a pale figure shimmered ghostly. It advanced into the light, and resolved itself into Aline. She had come in answer to that forgotten summons madame had sent her by Jacques. Entering unperceived she had seen André-Louis in the embrace of the woman whom he addressed as “mother.” She had recognized him instantly by his voice, and she could not have said what bewildered her more: his presence there or the thing she overheard.
“You heard, Aline?” madame exclaimed.
“I could not help it, madame. You sent for me. I am sorry if …” She broke off, and looked at André-Louis long and curiously. She was pale, but quite composed. She held out her hand to him. “And so you have come at last, André,” said she. “You might have come before.”
“I come when I am wanted,” was his answer. “Which is the only time in which one can be sure of being received.” He said it without bitterness, and having said it stooped to kiss her hand.
“You can forgive me what is past, I hope, since I failed of my purpose,” he said gently, half-pleading. “I could not have come to you pretending that the failure was intentional—a compromise between the necessities of the case and your own wishes. For it was not that. And yet, you do not seem to have profited by my failure. You are still a maid.”
She turned her shoulder to him.
“There are things,” she said, “that you will never understand.”
“Life, for one,” he acknowledged. “I confess that I am finding it bewildering. The very explanations calculated to simplify it seem but to complicate it further.” And he looked at Mme. de Plougastel.
“You mean something, I suppose,” said mademoiselle.
“Aline!” It was the Countess who spoke. She knew the danger of half-discoveries. “I can trust you, child, I know, and André-Louis, I am sure, will offer no objection.” She had taken up the letter to show it to Aline. Yet first her eyes questioned him.
“Oh, none, madame,” he assured her. “It is entirely a matter for yourself.”
Aline looked from one to the other with troubled eyes, hesitating to take the letter that was now proffered. When she had read it through, she very thoughtfully replaced it on the table. A moment she stood there with bowed head, the other two watching her. Then impulsively she ran to madame and put her arms about her.
“Aline!” It was a cry of wonder, almost of joy. “You do not utterly abhor me!”
“My dear,” said Aline, and kissed the tear-stained face that seemed to have grown years older in these last few hours.
In the background André-Louis, steeling himself against emotionalism, spoke with the voice of Scaramouche.
“It would be well, mesdames, to postpone all transports until they can be indulged at greater leisure and in more security. It is growing late. If we are to get out of this shambles we should be wise to take the road without more delay.”
It was a tonic as effective as it was necessary. It startled them into remembrance of their circumstances, and under the spur of it they went at once to make their preparations.
They left him for perhaps a quarter of an hour, to pace that long room alone, saved only from impatience by the turmoil of his mind. When at length they returned, they were accompanied by a tall man in a full-skirted shaggy greatcoat and a broad hat the brim of which was turned down all around. He remained respectfully by the door in the shadows.
Between them the two women had concerted it thus, or rather the Countess had so concerted it when Aline had warned her that André-Louis’ bitter hostility towards the Marquis made it unthinkable that he should move a finger consciously to save him.
Now despite the close friendship uniting M. de Kercadiou and his niece with Mme. de Plougastel, there were several matters concerning them of which the Countess was in ignorance. One of these was the project at one time existing of a marriage between Aline and M. de La Tour d’Azyr. It was a matter that Aline—naturally enough in the state of her feelings—had never mentioned, nor had M. de Kercadiou ever alluded to it since his coming to Meudon, by when he had perceived how unlikely it was ever to be realized.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s concern for Aline on that morning of the duel when he had found her half-swooning in Mme. de Plougastel’s carriage had been of a circumspection that betrayed nothing of his real interest in
