Part 31 (2/2)
”Ursula, I think I am going to die,” she said.
”What is the matter, dear?”
”Where did Savinien and Calyste go after they dined with you yesterday?”
”Dined with me?” said Ursula, to whom her husband had said nothing, not expecting such immediate inquiry. ”Savinien and I dined alone together and went to the Opera without Calyste.”
”Ursula, dearest, in the name of your love for Savinien, keep silence about what you have just said to me and what I shall now tell you. You alone shall know why I die--I am betrayed! at the end of three years, at twenty-two years of age!”
Her teeth chattered, her eyes were dull and frozen, her face had taken on the greenish tinge of an old Venetian mirror.
”You! so beautiful! For whom?”
”I don't know yet. But Calyste has told me two lies. Do not pity me, do not seem incensed, pretend ignorance and perhaps you can find out who _she_ is through Savinien. Oh! that letter of yesterday!”
Trembling, shaking, she sprang from her bed to a piece of furniture from which she took the letter.
”See,” she said, lying down again, ”the coronet of a marquise! Find out if Madame de Rochefide has returned to Paris. Am I to have a heart in which to weep and moan? Oh, dearest!--to see one's beliefs, one's poesy, idol, virtue, happiness, all, all in pieces, withered, lost! No G.o.d in the sky! no love upon earth! no life in my heart! no anything! I don't know if there's daylight; I doubt the sun. I've such anguish in my soul I scarcely feel the horrible sufferings in my body. Happily, the baby is weaned; my milk would have poisoned him.”
At that idea the tears began to flow from Sabine's eyes which had hitherto been dry.
Pretty Madame de Portenduere, holding in her hand the fatal letter, the perfume of which Sabine again inhaled, was at first stupefied by this true sorrow, shocked by this agony of love, without as yet understanding it, in spite of Sabine's incoherent attempts to relate the facts.
Suddenly Ursula was illuminated by one of those ideas which come to none but sincere friends.
”I must save her!” she thought to herself. ”Trust me, Sabine,” she cried. ”Wait for my return; I will find out the truth.”
”Ah! in my grave I'll love you,” exclaimed Sabine.
The viscountess went straight to the d.u.c.h.esse de Grandlieu, pledged her to secrecy, and then explained to her fully her daughter's situation.
”Madame,” she said as she ended, ”do you not think with me, that in order to avoid some fatal illness--perhaps, I don't know, even madness--we had better confide the whole truth to the doctor, and invent some tale to clear that hateful Calyste and make him seem for the time being innocent?”
”My dear child,” said the d.u.c.h.ess, who was chilled to the heart by this confidence, ”friends.h.i.+p has given you for the moment the experience of a woman of my age. I know how Sabine loves her husband; you are right, she might become insane.”
”Or lose her beauty, which would be worse,” said the viscountess.
”Let us go to her!” cried the d.u.c.h.ess.
Fortunately they arrived a few moments before the famous _accoucheur_, Dommanget, the only one of the two men of science whom Calyste had been able to find.
”Ursula has told me everything,” said the d.u.c.h.ess to her daughter, ”and you are mistaken. In the first place, Madame de Rochefide is not in Paris. As for what your husband did yesterday, my dear, I can tell you that he lost a great deal of money at cards, so that he does not even know how to pay for your dressing-table.”
”But _that?_” said Sabine, holding out to her mother the fatal letter.
”That!” said the d.u.c.h.ess, laughing; ”why, that is written on the Jockey Club paper; everybody writes nowadays on coroneted paper; even our stewards will soon be t.i.tled.”
The prudent mother threw the unlucky paper into the fire as she spoke.
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