"I had no alternative. I could not have carried out the project I had formed, and which"--Madeleine paused, and looked around her somewhat proudly, then added, "and which you now see crowned with success, if I had run the risk of your tracing me. You would have opposed my undertaking,--do you not feel that you would? Answer that question, before you reproach me."
"Yes, you are right, Madeleine; I fear I should have opposed your enterprise. And yet, believe me, I honor it,--I honor you all the more on account of that very undertaking. Thank Heaven, I have lived long enough in this land, where men (and women too) have sufficient courage to use their lives, and senseless idlers are the exceptions; to realize that man's work and woman's work are alike glorious; that labor is dignified by the hand that toils; and that you, Madeleine, the daughter of a duke,--you, the duchess-mantua-maker, have reached a higher altitude through that very labor than your birth could ever command."
"Maurice,--my cousin, my dear, dear cousin!--these words compensate me for all my trials and struggles. I hardly dared to dream that I should hear them for your lips. Ah, to-day,--to-day when I am about to accomplish one of the ends for which I have most earnestly toiled,--to-day when I shall become full possessor of this mansion, henceforth a home of my own,--this day will ever be full of precious memories to me; it will be written upon my book of life moistened with the sweetest tears I ever shed,--tears of gratitude and joy."
"You are to purchase this magnificent mansion? Is it possible?" asked Maurice, for the first time looking around him. "How can you have achieved this, Madeleine? You have had some friend who aided you, and"--he paused abruptly.
"I _have_ had friends, Maurice, warm and devoted friends," answered Madeleine, simply.
"But," he resumed, and hesitated, "how--how has all this been brought about? Ah, Madeleine, I have not forgotten, I cannot forget the sad revelation you made to me in Brittany. He whom you love,--it is _he_,--_he_ who has protected you, who has enjoyed the exquisite happiness of aiding you by his advice, and by his own means perhaps"--
Maurice uttered these words excitedly and almost in a tone of reproach.