And she had been thus deceiving him for twenty years!  But suddenly a gleam of hope penetrated his confused mind—­slight, barely possible; still a straw to cling to: 

“Perhaps Valentine has put her diamonds in Madeleine’s room.”

Without stopping to consider the indelicacy of what he was about to do, he hurried into the young girl’s room, and pulled open one drawer after another.  What did he find?

Not Mme. Fauvel’s diamonds; but Madeleine’s seven or eight boxes also empty.

Great heavens!  Was this gentle girl, whom he had treated as a daughter, an accomplice in this deed of shame?  Had she contributed her jewelry to add to the disgrace of the roof that sheltered her?

This last blow was almost too much for the miserable man.  He sank almost lifeless into a chair, and wringing his hands, groaned over the wreck of his happiness.  Was this the happy future to which he had looked forward?  Was the fabric of his honor, well-being, and domestic bliss, to be dashed to the earth and forever lost in a day?  Were his twenty years’ labor and high-standing to end thus in shame and sorrow?

Apparently nothing was changed in his existence; he was not materially injured; he could not reach forth his hand, and heal or revenge the smarting wound; the objects around him were unchanged; everything went on in the outside world just as it had gone on during the last twenty years; and yet what a horrible change had taken place in his own heart!  While the world envied his prosperity and happiness, here he sat, more heartsore and wearied of life than the worst criminal that ever stood before the inquisition.

What!  Valentine, the pure young girl whom he had loved and married in spite of her poverty, in spite of her cold offering of calm affection in return for his passionate devotion; Valentine, the tender, loving wife, who, before a year of married life had rolled by, so often assured him that her affection had grown into a deep, confiding love, that her devotion had grown stronger every day, and that her only prayer was that God would take them both together, since life would be a burden without her noble husband to shield and cherish her—­could she have been acting a lie for twenty years?

She, the darling wife, the mother of his sons!

His sons?  Good God!  Were they his sons?

If she could deceive him now when she was silver-haired, had she not deceived him when she was young?

Not only did he suffer in the present, but the uncertainty of the past tortured his soul.

He was like a man who is told that the exquisite wine he has drank contains poison.

Confidence is never half-way:  it is, or it is not.  His confidence was gone.  His faith was dead.

The wretched banker had rested his every hope and happiness on the love of his wife.  Believing that she had proved faithless, that she had played him false, and was unworthy of trust, he admitted no possibility of peaceful joy, and felt tempted to seek consolation from self-destruction.  What had he to live for now, save to mourn over the ashes of the past?