forehead and through her hair, tossing it into disorder, she
seemed to be making an effort to obtain from her memory some dormant
recollection. Then, like a frightened mare, which comes to smell an
object that has given it a momentary terror, she approached la Peyrade
slowly, stooping to look into his face, which he kept lowered, while,
in the midst of a silence inexpressible, she examined him steadily for
several seconds. Suddenly a terrible cry escaped her breast; she ran for
refuge into the arms of Corentin, and pressing herself against him with
all her force, she exclaimed:--

"Save me! save me! It is he! the wretch! It is he who did it!"

And, with her finger pointed at la Peyrade, she seemed to nail the
miserable object of her terror to his place.

After this explosion, she muttered a few disconnected words, and her
eyes closed; Corentin felt the relaxing of all the muscles by which she
had held him as in a vice the moment before, and he took her in his arms
and laid her on the sofa, insensible.

"Do not stay here, monsieur," said Corentin. "Go into my study; I will
come to you presently."

A few minutes later, after giving Lydie into the care of Katte and
Bruneau, and despatching Perrache for Doctor Bianchon, Corentin rejoined
la Peyrade.

"You see now, monsieur," he said with solemnity, "that in pursuing
with a sort of passion the idea of this marriage, I was following, in a
sense, the ways of God."

"Monsieur," said la Peyrade, with compunction, "I will confess to you--"

"Useless," said Corentin; "you can tell me nothing that I do not know;
I, on the contrary, have much to tell you. Old Peyrade, your uncle, in
the hope of earning a POT for this daughter whom he idolized, entered
into a dangerous private enterprise, the nature of which I need not
explain. In it he made enemies; enemies who stopped at nothing,--murder,
poison, rape. To paralyze your uncle's action by attacking him in his
dearest spot, Lydie was, not abducted, but enticed from her home and
taken to a house apparently respectable, where for ten days she was kept
concealed. She was not much alarmed by this detention, being told
that it was done at her father's wish, and she spent her time with her
music--you remember, monsieur, how she sang?"

"Oh!" exclaimed la Peyrade, covering his face with his hands.

"I told you yesterday that you might perhaps have more upon your
conscience than the Thuillier house. But you were young; you had just