"So, my dear madame," he
continued, "if I ever had any reason to fancy that you intended
causing me any trouble, I should go to this charming youth and
say: 'My good fellow, you are strangely deceived. Your money
doesn't come from the treasure-box of an English peer, but from a
small gambling den with which I am very well acquainted, having
often had occasion to swell its revenues with my franc-pieces.'
And if he mourned his vanished dreams, I should tell him: 'You are
wrong; for, if the great nobleman is lost, the good fairy remains.
She is none other than your mother, a very worthy person, whose
only object in life is your comfort and advancement.' And if he
doubted my word, I should bring him to his mother's house some
baccarat night; and there would be a scene of recognition worthy
of Fargueil's genius."
Any man but M. de Coralth would have had some compassion, for
Madame d'Argeles was evidently suffering agony. "It is as I
feared!" she moaned, in a scarcely audible voice.
However, he heard her. "What!" he exclaimed in a tone of intense
astonishment; "did you really doubt it? No; I can't believe it; it
would be doing injustice to your intelligence and experience. Are
people like ourselves obliged to talk in order to understand each
other? Should I ever have ventured to do what I have done, in your
house, if I had not known the secret of your maternal tenderness,
delicacy of feeling, and devotion?"
She was weeping; big tears were rolling down her face, tracing a
broad furrow through the powder on her cheeks.
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