“Ah! if I might dare? But no; it would be asking too much, perhaps, to
beg you to let me see them?”
He did not know how ready Daniel was to grant the request. Ready as he
was, to tell Henrietta everything, he could not but wish that she should
read these letters, as she would see from them, that, if the countess
had written to him, he had never returned an answer.
“You can never ask too much, M. Ravinet,” he replied. “Lefloch, my
servant, must have come up by this time with the trunks; and, if you
give me time to go down to my room, you shall have the letters at once.”
He was on the point of leaving the room, when the old dealer held him
back, and said,--
“Sir, you forget the man who has been following you all the way from
Marseilles. Wait till my sister has made sure that there is nobody
watching you.”
Mrs. Bertolle at once went out; but she noticed nothing suspicious, and
found all the passages silent and deserted. The spy had probably gone to
make his report to his employers. Daniel went down promptly; and, when
he came back, he held in his hand a bundle of faded and crumpled papers,
which he handed to Papa Ravinet, with the words,--
“Here they are!”
Strange as it may seem, when the old gentleman touched these letters,
impregnated with the peculiar perfume affected by Sarah Brandon, he
trembled and turned pale. Immediately, however, perhaps in order to
conceal his embarrassment, or to be the better able to reflect, he took
a candlestick from the mantlepiece, and sat down aside, at one of the
small tables. Mrs. Bertolle, Daniel, and Henrietta were silent; and
nothing broke the stillness but the rustling of the paper, and the old
gentleman’s voice as he muttered,--
“This is fabulous,--Sarah writing such things! She did not even disguise
her handwriting,--she who never committed an imprudence in her life; she
ruins herself. And she signs her name!”
But he had seen enough. He folded up the letters, and, rising again,
said to Champcey,--
“No doubt now! Sarah loves you madly, insanely. Ah! how she does love!
Well, well, all heartless women love thus when a sudden passion conquers
them, setting their brains and their senses on fire, and”--
Daniel noticed in Henrietta’s face a sign of concern; and, quite
distressed, he beckoned to the old gentleman to say nothing more. But he
saw nothing, full as he was of his notion, and went on,--
“Now I understand. Sarah Brandon has not been able to keep her secret;
and Brevan, seeing her love, and furious with jealousy, did not consider
that to hire an assassin was to ruin himself.”
The indignation he felt had restored the blood to his face; and, as he
struck the packet of letters with the palm of his hand, he exclaimed,--
“Yes, all is clear now; and by this correspondence, Sarah Brandon, you
are ours!”
What could be the plan of Papa Ravinet? Did he expect to use these
letters as weapons against her? or did he propose to send them to Count
Ville-Handry in order to open his eyes? Daniel trembled at the idea; for
his loyalty rebelled against such a vengeance; he felt as if he would
have become a traitor.
“You see, to use a woman’s correspondence, however odious and
contemptible she may be, would always be very repugnant to me.”
“I had no idea of asking such a thing of you,” replied the old dealer.
“No; it is something very different I want you to do.”