“Are you quite sure, madam, that that was what M. de Boiscoran said?”

“Oh, quite sure, sir!  And, if I lived a thousand years, I should never forget the look of his eyes, or the tone of his voice.”

M. de Chandore did not allow her to be interrupted again.

“But surely, my dear child, Jacques told you—­you—­something more precise?”

“No.”

“You did not ask him even what those improbable facts were?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Well?”

“He said that I was the very last person who could be told.”

“That man ought to be burnt over a slow fire,” said M. de Chandore to himself.  Then he added in a louder voice,—­

“And you do not think all this very strange, very extraordinary?”

“It seems to me horrible!”

“I understand.  But what do you think of Jacques?”

“I think, dear papa, that he cannot act otherwise, or he would not do it.  Jacques is too intelligent and too courageous to deceive himself easily.  As he alone knows every thing, he alone can judge.  I, of course, am bound to respect his will more than anybody else.”

But the old gentleman did not think himself bound to respect it; and, exasperated as he was by this resignation of his grandchild, he was on the point of telling her his mind fully, when she got up with some effort, and said, in an almost inaudible voice,—­

“I am broken to pieces!  Excuse me, grandpapa, if I go to my room.”  She left the parlor.  M. de Chandore accompanied her to the door, remained there till he had seen her get up stairs, where her maid was waiting for her, and then came back to M. Folgat.

“They are going to kill me, sir!” he cried, with an explosion of wrath and despair which was almost frightful in a man of his age.  “She had in her eyes the same look that her mother had when she told me, after her husband’s death, ‘I shall not survive him.’  And she did not survive my poor son.  And then I, old man, was left alone with that child; and who knows but she may have in her the germ of the same disease which killed her mother?  Alone!  And for these twenty years I have held my breath to listen if she is still breathing as naturally and regularly”—­

“You are needlessly alarmed,” began the advocate.

But Grandpapa Chandore shook his head, and said,—­

“No, no.  I fear my child has been hurt in her heart’s heart.  Did you not see how white she looked, and how faint her voice was?  Great God! wilt thou leave me all alone here upon earth?  O God! for which of my sins dost thou punish me in my children?  For mercy’s sake, call me home before she also leaves me, who is the joy of my life.  And I can do nothing to turn aside this fatality—­stupid inane old man that I am!  And this Jacques de Boiscoran—­if he were guilty, after all?  Ah the wretch!  I would hang him with my own hands!”

Deeply moved, M. Folgat had watched the old gentleman’s grief.  Now he said,—­