The mother looked at her, took her head and kissed her fervently on the forehead.

“You are an angel!” she said.

It must be confessed that their uncle, Des Rameures, notwithstanding the tender affection he showed them, was rather in the way.  He never had liked Camors; he had accepted him as a nephew as he had accepted him for a deputy—­with more of resignation than enthusiasm.  His antipathy was only too well justified by the event; but it was necessary to keep him in ignorance of it.  He was an excellent man; but rough and blunt.  The conduct of Camors, if he had but suspected it, would surely have urged him to some irreparable quarrel.  Therefore Madame de Tecle and her daughter, in his presence, were compelled to make only half utterances, and maintain great reserve—­as much as if he had been a stranger.  This painful restraint would have become insupportable had not the young Countess’s health, day by day, assumed a less doubtful character, and furnished them with excuses for their preoccupation, their disquiet, and their retired life.

Madame de Tecle, who reproached herself with the misfortunes of her daughter, as her own work, and who condemned herself with an unspeakable bitterness, did not cease to search, in the midst of those ruins of the past and of the present, some reparation, some refuge for the future.  The first idea which presented itself to her imagination had been to separate absolutely, and at any cost, the Countess from her husband.  Under the first shock of fright which the duplicity of Camors had inflicted upon her, she could not dwell without horror on the thought of replacing her child at the side of such a man.  But this separation-supposing they could obtain it, through the consent of M. de Camors, or the authority of the law—­would give to the public a secret scandal, and might entail redoubled catastrophes.  Were it not for these consequences she would, at least, have dug between Madame de Camors and her husband an eternal abyss.  Madame de Tecle did not desire this.  By force of reflection she had finally seen through the character of M. de Camors in one day—­not probably more favorably, but more truly.  Madame de Tecle, although a stranger to all wickedness, knew the world and knew life, and her penetrating intelligence divined yet more than she knew certainly.  She then very nearly understood what species of moral monster M. de Camors was.  Such as she understood him, she hoped something from him still.  However, the condition of the Countess offered her some consolation in the future, which she ought not to risk depriving herself of; and God might permit that this pledge of this unfortunate union might some day reunite the severed ties.

Madame de Tecle, in communicating her reflections, her hopes, and her fears to her daughter, added:  “My poor child, I have almost lost the right to give you counsel; but I tell you, were it myself I should act thus.”

“Very well, mother, I shall do so,” replied the young woman.