“Perhaps it would be better to throw it into the fire without reading
it.”
But already he had torn the envelope; and, as he was reading the first
lines, a crimson blush overspread his temples, and his eyes became
bloodshot. For Henrietta, sure of the Duke of Champdoce, had not
hesitated to open her heart to him, describing her situation as it
really was; painting her step-mother as he had anticipated she would
be; and at every turn certain phrases were repeated, which were so many
blows with a dagger to the count.
“This is unheard of!” he growled with a curse. “This is
incomprehensible! Such perversity has never been known before.”
He went and stood before his daughter, his arms crossed, and cried with
a voice of thunder,--
“Wretch! Will you disgrace us all?”
She made no reply. Immovable like a statue, she did not tremble under
the storm. Besides, what could she do? Defend herself? She would not
stoop to do that. Repeat the impudent avowals of the countess? What
would be the use? Did she not know beforehand that the count would not
believe her? In the meantime, grim Mrs. Brian had taken a seat by the
side of her beloved Sarah.
“I,” she said, “if I were, for my sins, afflicted with such a daughter,
I would get her a husband as soon as possible.”
“I have thought of that,” replied the count; “and I believe I have even
hit upon an arrangement which”--
But, when he saw his daughter’s watchful eye fixed upon him, he paused,
and, pointing towards the door, said to her brutally,--
“You are in the way here!”
Without saying a word, she went out, much less troubled by her father’s
fury than by the strange confessions which the countess had made. She
only now began to measure the full extent of her step-mother’s hatred,
and knew that she was too practical a woman to waste her time by making
idle speeches. Therefore, if she had stated that she loved Daniel,--a
statement which Henrietta believed to be untrue,--if she had impudently
confessed that she coveted her husband’s fortune, she had a purpose in
view. What was that purpose? How could any one unearth the truth from
among such a mass of falsehood and deception?
At all events, the scene was strange enough to confound any one’s
judgment. And when Henrietta, that evening, found an opportunity to tell
M. de Brevan what had happened, he trembled in his chair, and was so
overwhelmed with surprise, that he forgot his precautions, and exclaimed
almost aloud,--
“That is not possible!”
There was no doubt that he, usually so impassive, was terribly excited.
In less than five minutes he had changed color more than ten times. You
would have thought he was a man who at a single blow sees the edifice of
all his hopes crumble to pieces. At last, after a moment’s reflection,
he said,--
“Perhaps it would be wise, madam, to leave the house.”