“But we are behaving shamefully. What would Jacques say, if he could see
us from his prison! Why should we be so sad? Is he not innocent?”
Her eyes shone with unusual brilliancy: her voice had a ring which moved
Manuel Folgat deeply.
“I can at least, in justice to myself,” she went on saying, “assure you
that I have never doubted him for a moment. And how should I ever have
dared to doubt? The very night on which the fire broke out, Jacques
wrote me a letter of four pages, which he sent me by one of his tenants,
and which reached me at nine o’clock. I showed it to grandpapa. He read
it, and then he said I was a thousand times right, because a man who had
been meditating such a crime could never have written that letter.”
“I said so, and I still think so,” added M. de Chandore; “and every
sensible man will think so too; but”--
His granddaughter did not let him finish.
“It is evident therefore, that Jacques is the victim of an abominable
intrigue; and we must unravel it. We have cried enough: now let us act!”