Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

his brain; because she looked so beautiful thus, all in tears, and her hair loose; because there arose from her person so subtle a charm, that words failed him to express the sensations that agitated him.

“Can you,” she went on, “take for your wife the daughter of a dishonored man?  No, you cannot.  Forgive me, then, for having for a moment turned away your life from its object; forgive the sorrow which I have caused you; leave me to the misery of my fate; forget me!”

She was suffocating.

“Ah, you have never loved me!” exclaimed Marius.

Raising her hands to heaven,

“Thou hearest him, great God!” she uttered, as if shocked by a blasphemy.

“Would it be easy for you to forget me then?  Were I to be struck by misfortune, would you break our engagement, cease to love me?”

She ventured to take his hands, and, pressing them between hers,

“To cease loving you no longer depends on my will,” she murmured with quivering lips.  “Poor, abandoned of all, disgraced, criminal even, I should love you still and always.”

With a passionate gesture, Marius threw his arm around her waist, and, drawing her to his breast, covered her blonde hair with burning kisses.

“Well, ‘tis thus that I love you too!” he exclaimed, “and with all my soul, exclusively, and for life!  What do I care for your parents?  Do I know them?  Your father—does he exist?  Your name —it is mine, the spotless name of the Tregars.  You are my wife! mine, mine!”

She was struggling feebly:  an almost invincible stupor was creeping over her.  She felt her reason disturbed, her energy giving way, a film before her eyes, the air failing to her heaving chest.

A great effort of her will restored her to consciousness.  She withdrew gently, and sank upon a chair, less strong against joy than she had been against sorrow.

“Pardon me,” she stammered, “pardon me for having doubted you!”

M. de Tregars was not much less agitated than Mlle. Gilberte:  but he was a man; and the springs of his energy were of a superior temper.  In less than a minute he had fully recovered his self-possession and imposed upon his features their accustomed expression.  Drawing a chair by the side of Mlle. Gilberte,

“Permit me, my friend,” he said, “to remind you that our moments are numbered, and that there are many details which it is urgent that I should know.”

“What details?” she asked, raising her head.

“About your father.”

She looked at him with an air of profound surprise.

“Do you not know more about it than I do?” she replied, “more than my mother, more than any of us?  Did you not, whilst following up the people who robbed your father, strike mine unwittingly?  And ‘tis I, wretch that I am, who inspired you to that fatal resolution; and I have not the heart to regret it.”

M. de Tregars had blushed imperceptibly.  “How did you know?” he began.

“Was it not said that you were about to marry Mlle. de Thaller?”

He drew up suddenly.

“Never,” he exclaimed, “has this marriage existed, except in the brain of M. de Thaller, and, more still, of the Baroness de Thaller.  That ridiculous idea occurred to her because she likes my name, and would be delighted to see her daughter Marquise de Tregars.  She has never breathed a word of it to me; but she has spoken of it everywhere, with just enough secrecy to give rise to a good piece of parlor gossip.  She went so far as to confide to several persons of my acquaintance the amount of the dowry, thinking thus to encourage me.  As far as I could, I warned you against this false news through the Signor Gismondo.”

“The Signor Gismondo relieved me of cruel anxieties,” she replied; “but I had suspected the truth from the first.  Was I not the confidante of your hopes?  Did I not know your projects?  I had taken for granted that all this talk about a marriage was but a means to advance yourself in M. de Thaller’s intimacy without awaking his suspicions.”

M. de Tregars was not the man to deny a true fact.

“Perhaps, indeed, I have not been wholly foreign to M. Favoral’s disaster.  At least I may have hastened it a few months, a few days only, perhaps; for it was inevitable, fatal.  Nevertheless, had I suspected the real facts, I would have given up my designs —Gilberte, I swear it—rather than risk injuring your father.  There is no undoing what is done; but the evil may, perhaps, be somewhat lessened.”

Mlle. Gilberte started.

“Great heavens!” she exclaimed, “do you, then, believe my father innocent?”

Better than any one else, Mlle. Gilberte must have been convinced of her father’s guilt.  Had she not seen him humiliated and trembling before M. de Thaller?  Had she not heard him, as it were, acknowledge the truth of the charge that was brought against him?  But at twenty hope never forsakes us, even in presence of facts.

And when she understood by M. de Tregars’ silence that she was mistaken,

“It’s madness,” she murmured, dropping her head: 

“I feel it but too well.  But the heart speaks louder than reason.  It is so cruel to be driven to despise one’s father!”

She wiped the tears which filled her eyes, and, in a firmer voice,

“What happened is so incomprehensible!” she went on.  “How can I help imagining some one of those mysteries which time alone unravels.  For twenty-four hours we have been losing ourselves in idle conjectures, and, always and fatally, we come to this conclusion, that my father must be the victim of some mysterious intrigue.

“M.  Chapelain, whom a loss of a hundred and sixty thousand francs has not made particularly indulgent, is of that opinion.”

“And so am I,” exclaimed Marius.

“You see, then—”

But without allowing her to proceed and taking gently her hand,

“Let me tell you all,” he interrupted, “and try with you to find an issue to this horrible situation.  Strange rumors are afloat about M. Favoral.  It is said that his austerity was but a mask, his sordid economy a means of gaining confidence.  It is affirmed that in fact he abandoned himself to all sorts of disorders; that he had, somewhere in Paris, an establishment, where he lavished the money of which he was so sparing here.  Is it so?  The same thing is said of all those in whose hands large fortunes have melted.”

The young girl had become quite red.

“I believe that is true,” she replied.  “The commissary of police stated so to