my mother’s death, she revealed to me the secret of her life,—­not without burning tears.  I have loved you better since the day I learned from the priest as he absolved my mother that there are passions condemned by the world and by the Church.  But surely God will not be severe when they are the sins of souls as tender as that of my mother; only, that dear woman could never bring herself to repent.  She loved much, Jules; she was all love.  So I have prayed daily for her, but never judged her.

“That night I learned the cause of her deep maternal tenderness; then I also learned that there was in Paris a man whose life and whose love centred on me; that your fortune was his doing, and that he loved you.  I learned also that he was exiled from society and bore a tarnished name; but that he was more unhappy for me, for us, than for himself.  My mother was all his comfort; she was dying, and I promised to take her place.  With all the ardor of a soul whose feelings had never been perverted, I saw only the happiness of softening the bitterness of my mother’s last moments, and I pledged myself to continue her work of secret charity,—­the charity of the heart.  The first time that I saw my father was beside the bed where my mother had just expired.  When he raised his tearful eyes, it was to see in me a revival of his dead hopes.  I had sworn, not to tell a lie, but to keep silence; and that silence what woman could have broken it?

“There is my fault, Jules,—­a fault which I expiate by death.  I doubted you.  But fear is so natural to a woman; above all, a woman who knows what it is that she may lose.  I trembled for our love.  My father’s secret seemed to me the death of my happiness; and the more I loved, the more I feared.  I dared not avow this feeling to my father; it would have wounded him, and in his situation a wound was agony.  But, without a word from me, he shared my fears.  That fatherly heart trembled for my happiness as much as I trembled for myself; but it dared not speak, obeying the same delicacy that kept me mute.  Yes, Jules, I believed that you could not love the daughter of Gratien Bourignard as you loved your Clemence.  Without that terror could I have kept back anything from you,—­you who live in every fold of my heart?

“The day when that odious, unfortunate young officer spoke to you, I was forced to lie.  That day, for the second time in my life, I knew what pain was; that pain has steadily increased until this moment, when I speak with you for the last time.  What matters now my father’s position?  You know all.  I could, by the help of my love, have conquered my illness and borne its sufferings; but I cannot stifle the voice of doubt.  Is it not probable that my origin would affect the purity of your love and weaken it, diminish it?  That fear nothing has been able to quench in me.  There, Jules, is the cause of my death.  I cannot live fearing a word, a look,—­a word you