the discovery you are about to
disclose to him."

"I know why I do so. This discovery will fill him with surprise, joy,
and I shall be present to profit by his first burst of softened feeling.
To-day or never he will say to me, 'A marriage must legitimise the birth
of our child!' If he says so, his word is sacred, and then will the hope
of my life be realised!"

"Yes, if he makes you the promise."

"And that he may do so, nothing must be neglected under these decisive
circumstances. I know Rodolph; and once having found his daughter, he
will overcome his aversion for me, and will not retreat from any
sacrifice to assure her the most enviable lot, to make her as entirely
happy as she has been until now wretched."

"However brilliant the destiny he may assure to your daughter, there is,
between the reparation to her and the resolution to marry you in order
to legitimise the birth of this child, a very wide abyss."

"Her father will pass over this abyss."

"But this unfortunate child has, perhaps, been so vitiated by the misery
in which she has lived that the prince, instead of feeling attracted
towards her--"

"What are you saying?" cried Sarah, interrupting her brother. "Is she
not as handsome, as a young girl, as she was a lovely infant? Rodolph,
without knowing her, was so deeply interested in her as to take charge
of her future destiny, and sent her to his farm at Bouqueval, whence we
carried her off."

"Yes, thanks to your obstinacy in desiring to break all the ties of the
prince's affection, in the foolish hope of one day leading him back to
yourself!"

"And yet, but for this foolish hope, I should not have discovered, at
the price of my life, the secret of my daughter's existence. Is it not
through this woman, who had carried her off from the farm, that I have
learned the infamous deceit of the notary, Ferrand?"

"It would have been better to have awaited the young creature's coming
out of prison, before you sent to request the Grand Duke to come here."

"Awaited! And do I know that the salutary crisis in which I now am will
last until to-morrow? Perhaps I am but momentarily sustained by my
ambition only."

"What proofs have you for the prince, and will he believe you?"

"He will believe me when he reads the commencement of, the disclosure
which I wrote from the dictation of that woman who stabbed me,--a
disclosure of which I have, fortunately, forgotten no circumstance. He
will believe me when he