His astonishment set a mad hope tearing at Valentine’s heart. “M. de Brencourt,” she answered. “Was he wrong, then?”
But M. Chassin had flung himself out of the confessional, his stole in his hand. “M. de Brencourt!” he exclaimed. Once out he seemed on the verge of some expression better befitting his late employment as gardener or plotter than his present as priest. “M. de Brencourt told you—my child, do not stay kneeling there . . . M. de Brencourt . . . here, sit on this chair and let me hear more of this extraordinary . . . misunderstanding!—May I know this great matter—your identity—so long as to speak of it a little now?”
His face was mottled with emotions. Valentine, her eyes fixed on him, had already risen from her knees and did sink down on the chair he indicated. In front of her the candles burnt round the pall and on the altar, ready for the funeral Mass.
“Yes, Father—but—_misunderstanding_!” she caught at the word. “Is it untrue, then, Father, is it untrue?”
“I do not say that, but . . . tell me what M. de Brencourt said to you!”
“But is it untrue—is it untrue?” she repeated piteously. “O God, is he alive after all?”
The secret knocked so hard at the door of the priest’s lips that it seemed to him it must force its way out. It was cruelty to keep her in this tension—and almost absurd, too. But he must have a little time to reflect if he were justified in breaking so solemn a promise.
“Calm yourself, Madame la Duchesse,” he said, and, sufficiently agitated himself, sat down beside her. How extraordinary, how dizzying a sensation to be in the actual living presence of her whose loss had turned the whole current of his foster-brother’s being. “Tell me first just what M. de Brencourt said.”
Valentine put her hands to her head in the effort to remember exactly.
“He said that M. de Kersaint had told him it was useless to write to the Duc de Trélan for permission to search here because he had just heard that the Duc was dead—had been dead some time.”
Valentine’s heart seemed to stand still. “It was false then?”
“I cannot say, Madame, whether it was false or true,” responded M. Chassin, “this only, that M. de Brencourt must have strangely misunderstood M. de Kersaint, for the Marquis has certainly no grounds for asserting that the Duc is dead. I do not say that it is not so, but he has no authority for asserting it . . . and I do not believe that he ever did.”