"Rely upon me, my child, answered Adrienne, forced to dissemble her painful embarrassment; "you know I am interested in all that interests you.But tell me," added Mdlle.de Cardoville, in a voice of emotion, "before taking this desperate resolution, did you not write to me?"
"Yes, lady."
"Alas!" resumed Adrienne, sorrowfully; "and when you received no answer--
how cruel, how ungrateful you must have thought me!"
"Oh! never, lady, did I accuse you of such feelings; my poor sister will tell you so.You had my gratitude to the last."
"I believe you--for I knew your heart.But how then did you explain my silence?"
"I had justly offended you by my sudden departure, lady."
"Offended!--Alas! I never received your letter."
"And yet you know that I wrote to you, lady."
"Yes, my poor girl; I know, also, that you wrote to me at my porter's lodge.Unfortunately, he delivered your letter to one of my women, named Florine, telling her it came from you."
"Florine! the young woman that was so kind to me!"
"Florine deceived me shamefully; she was sold to my enemies, and acted as a spy on my actions."
"She!--Good Heavens!" cried Mother Bunch."Is it possible?"
"She herself," answered Adrienne, bitterly; "but, after all, we must pity as well as blame her.She was forced to obey by a terrible necessity, and her confession and repentance secured my pardon before her death."
"Then she is dead--so young! so fair!"
"In spite of her faults, I was greatly moved by her end.She confessed what she had done, with such heart-rending regrets.Amongst her avowals, she told me she had intercepted a letter, in which you asked for an interview that might save your sister's life."
"It is true, lady; such were the terms of my letter.What interest had they to keep it from you?"
"They feared to see you return to me, my good guardian angel.You loved me so tenderly, and my enemies dreaded your faithful affection, so wonderfully aided by the admirable instinct of your heart.Ah! I shall never forget how well-deserved was the horror with which you were inspired by a wretch whom I defended against your suspicions."
"M.Rodin?" said Mother Bunch, with a shudder.
"Yes," replied Adrienne; "but we will not talk of these people now.
Their odious remembrance would spoil the joy I feel in seeing you restored to life--for your voice is less feeble, your cheeks are beginning to regain a little color.Thank God! I am so happy to have found you once more;--if you knew all that I hope, all that I expect from our reunion--for we will not part again--promise me that, in the name of our friendship."
"I--your friend!" said Mother Bunch, timidly casting down her eyes.
"A few days before your departure from my house, did I not call you my friend, my sister? What is there changed? Nothing, nothing," added Mdlle.de Cardoville, with deep emotion."One might say, on the contrary, that a fatal resemblance in our positions renders your friendship even dearer to me.And I shall have it, shall I not.Oh, do not refuse it me--I am so much in want of a friend!"
"You, lady? you in want of the friendship of a poor creature like me?"
"Yes," answered Adrienne, as she gazed on the other with an expression of intense grief; "nay, more, you are perhaps the only person, to whom I could venture to confide my bitter sorrows." So saying, Mdlle.de Cardoville colored deeply.
"And how do I deserve such marks of confidence?" asked Mother Bunch, more and more surprised.
"You deserve it by the delicacy of your heart, by the steadiness of your character," answered Adrienne, with some hesitation; "then--you are a woman--and I am certain you will understand what I suffer, and pity me."
"Pity you, lady?" said the other, whose astonishment continued to increase."You, a great lady, and so much envied--I, so humble and despised, pity you?"
"Tell me, my poor friend," resumed Adrienne, after some moments of silence, "are not the worst griefs those which we dare not avow to any one, for fear of raillery and contempt? How can we venture to ask interest or pity, for sufferings that we hardly dare avow to ourselves, because they make us blush?"
The sewing-girl could hardly believe what she heard.Had her benefactress felt, like her, the effects of an unfortunate passion, she could not have held any other language.But the sempstress could not admit such a supposition; so, attributing to some other cause the sorrows of Adrienne, she answered mournfully, whilst she thought of her own fatal love for Agricola, "Oh! yes, lady.A secret grief, of which we are ashamed, must be frightful--very frightful!"
"But then what happiness to meet, not only a heart noble enough to inspire complete confidence, but one which has itself been tried by a thousand sorrows, and is capable of affording you pity, support and counsel!--Tell me, my dear child," added Mdlle.de Cardoville, as she looked attentively at Mother Bunch, "if you were weighed down by one of those sorrows, at which one blushes, would you not be happy, very happy, to find a kindred soul, to whom you might entrust your griefs, and half relieve them by entire and merited confidence?"
For the first time in her life, Mother Bunch regarded Mdlle.de Cardoville with a feeling of suspicion and sadness.
The last words of the young lady seemed to her full of meaning "Doubtless, she knows my secret," said Mother Bunch to herself;
"doubtless, my journal has fallen into her hands.--She knows my love for Agricola, or at least suspects it.What she has been saying to me is intended to provoke my confidence, and to assure herself if she has been rightly informed."
These thoughts excited in the workgirl's mind no bitter or ungrateful feeling towards her benefactress; but the heart of the unfortunate girl was so delicately susceptible on the subject of her fatal passion, that, in spite of her deep and tender affection for Mdlle.de Cardoville, she suffered cruelly at the thought of Adrienne's being mistress of her secret.