“For pity’s sake, forget my tears! Don’t believe what my husband has told you. Never seek to know. Remain ignorant as you are on the subject!”
“Then he whom you love is related to me, as: you wish to hide his name even from me,” said Madame Desvarennes with instinctive anguish.
She was silent. Her eyes became fixed. They looked without seeing. She was thinking.
“I beseech you,” cried Jeanne, madly placing her hands before Madame Desvarennes’s face as if to check her scrutiny.
“If I had a son,” continued the mistress, “I would believe--” Suddenly she ceased speaking; she became pale, and bending toward Jeanne, she looked into her very soul.
“No! no!” interrupted Jeanne, terrified at seeing that the mistress had found out the truth.
“You deny it before I have pronounced the name?” said Madame Desvarennes in a loud voice. “You read it then on my lips? Unhappy girl! The man whom you love is the husband of my daughter!”
My daughter! The accent with which Madame Desvarennes pronounced the word “my” was full of tragical power. It revealed the mother capable of doing anything to defend the happiness of the child whom she adored. Serge had calculated well. Between Jeanne and Micheline, Madame Desvarennes would not hesitate. She would have allowed the world to crumble away to make of its ruins a shelter where her daughter would be joyous and happy.
Jeanne had fallen back overwhelmed. The mistress raised her roughly. She had no more consideration for her. It was necessary that she should speak. Jeanne was the sole witness, and if the truth had to be got by main force she should be made to speak it.
“It is not a question of that! In one word, answer me: Does he love you?”
“And he has married Micheline!” exclaimed Madame Desvarennes, with a fearful gesture. “I distrusted him. Why did I not obey my instinct?”
And she began walking about like a lioness in a cage. Then, suddenly stopping and placing herself before Jeanne, she continued:
She thought only of her own flesh and blood. Without hesitation, unconsciously, she abandoned the other--the child of adoption. She claimed the safety of her daughter as a debt.
“What has she to fear?” asked Jeanne, bitterly. “She triumphs, as she is his wife.”