as more compassion than resentment in the manner in which the
marchioness looked at her husband.

"You had mentioned to me your unjust suspicions," she replied; "but I
felt strong in my innocence, and I was in hope that time and my conduct
would efface them."

"Faith once lost never comes back again."

"The fearful idea that you could doubt of your paternity had never even
occurred to me."

The marquis shook his head.

"Still it was so," he replied. "I have suffered terribly. I loved
Jacques. Yes, in spite of all, in spite of myself, I loved him. Had he
not all the qualities which are the pride and the joy of a family?
Was he not generous and noble-hearted, open to all lofty sentiments,
affectionate, and always anxious to please me? I never had to complain
of him. And even lately, during this abominable war, has he not again
shown his courage, and valiantly earned the cross which they gave him?
At all times, and from all sides, I have been congratulated on his
account. They praised his talents and his assiduity. Alas! at the very
moment when they told me what a happy father I was, I was the most
wretched of men. How many times would I have drawn him to my heart! But
immediately that terrible doubt rose within me, if he should not be my
son; and I pushed him back, and looked in his features for a trace of
another man's features."

His wrath had cooled down, perhaps by its very excess.

He felt a certain tenderness in his heart, and sinking into his chair,
and hiding his face in his hands, he murmured,--

"If he should be my son, however; if he should be innocent! Ah, this
doubt is intolerable! And I who would not move from here,--I who have
done nothing for him,--I might have done every thing at first. It would
have been easy for me to obtain a change of venue to free him from this
Galpin, formerly his friend, and now his enemy."

M. de Boiscoran was right when he said that his wife's pride was
unmanageable. And still, as cruelly wounded as woman well could be, she
now suppressed her pride, and, thinking only of her son, remained quite
humble. Drawing from her bosom the letter which Jacques had sent to
her the day before she left Sauveterre, she handed it to her husband,
saying,--

"Will you read what our son says?"

The marquis's hand trembled as he took the letter; and, when he had torn
it open, he read,--

"Do you forsake me too, father, when everybody forsakes me? And yet I
have never needed your love