Adieu, I shall go hence, full of love and respect for you."

The ex-Princess Olsdorf had drawn to her the sobbing young girl. She kissed her with a long and feverish kiss, saying:

"For them Vera--for them, and for you."

Then she fled, stifling her sobs.

Next morning, after having brushed with a kiss the eyelids of her sleeping children, who it may be were dreaming of her, Mme. Paul Meyrin, bent with sorrow, took her place in the carriage that was to bring her to Mittau.

On her arrival in Paris she was scarcely recognizable. In forty-eight hours she looked ten years older. When Mme. Daubrel saw her come into the room in the Rue d'a.s.sas, where she was sewing near the sleeping Marie, she could not hinder a movement of surprise.

"Yes," said Lise, sinking into her friend's arms, "it is so, is it not?

I am much changed?"

"No, no, but the journey has tired you," said Marthe. "What else could be expected?"

"Yes, it has," she said, with a sad smile. "And Marie?"

"You can see. The dear little thing is as well as possible. I have been with her every day, and all day long."

"I knew I could depend on you."

Mme. Meyrin kissed her daughter softly, fearing to disturb her; and sinking into a chair opposite Marthe, asked:

"And--my husband?"

"He has been away some days."

"Where is he?"

"At Rome. He was sent for about some important work."

"At Rome? Work? Marthe, do not lie to me. Can any new misfortune surprise me? Do not fear. I am brave. Monsieur Meyrin has gone away with that woman."

"I don't know, but I do not believe it."

"And I am sure of it. Has he left nothing for me--not a word?"

"He sent me this letter before he went."

Mme. Daubrel took from under the clock on the mantel-shelf a sealed letter and gave it to Mme. Meyrin, who tore open the envelope, devoured the contents of the inclosed letter, without a muscle of her face betraying the emotion it occasioned, and, handing it to the young woman:

"Read," she said.

"Oh, it is infamous," cried Marthe, after her eyes had taken in the purport of the following lines:

"MY DEAR LISE,--You won't blame me for following your example, that is, acting as a free agent. I am glad that your son has recovered his health, and that while you were away nothing serious has happened to your daughter, who also is your child. It might have been otherwise; but doubtless the son of a prince fills a greater s.p.a.ce in his mother's heart than the daughter of a simple artist like me. I am about to start for Rome where a commission I have to execute will detain me for a pretty long time. I hope you will be so good as to send me news there, addressing to the Villa Medici, of yourself and Marie."

"No, it is not infamous," murmured Mme. Meyrin, "it was fated, and, on the part of G.o.d, it is justice. Twice married, I have now no husband.

The mother of three children, all I have with me is the one in the cradle there. Dumesnil and you are the only friends I have left now."

"Lise, my dear Lise," said Mme. Daubrel.

"Listen to me, dear friend," continued the unhappy woman, in feverish excitement. "I am sure that soon you will have to watch by my pillow.

Promise that you will hide my condition from everybody, above all from Monsieur Meyrin, and from my mother herself, until all hope is gone."

"I promise readily," replied Marthe, "so sure am I that a few days' rest will bring you calmness and health."

Mme. Daubrel was mistaken. In less than a week Mme. Meyrin, attacked by a severe fever, had to take to her bed, and the doctors summoned to a consultation regarded her state as critical. They were in doubt only about the cause of the malady. They did not guess that the innocent caresses of her little daughter were insufficient for the poor, despairing creature who was dying of unsatiated maternal love.

The ex-Princess Olsdorf, so courted of old, had near her only an old actor and Mme. Daubrel, whose social position we must now sketch more completely than we have yet done.

CHAPTER VII.

MADAME DAUBREL'S STORY.

At the time of his marriage with Mlle. Marthe Percier, M. Raymond Daubrel was nearly forty years old. His wife, on the contrary, was barely twenty.

The son of a Frenchman in business in New York, where he represented the house of Percier, of Paris, in which he was a partner, Raymond Daubrel was sent to France by his father on the death of M. Percier, whose widow retained an interest in the business.

Mme. Percier had then a daughter of seventeen, pretty, gentle, well-bred, and a good musician, whose youthful charms made a deep impression on M. Daubrel. Having no relations in Paris, feeling lonely, and being kept by the serious turn of his mind from loose love affairs, he had little choice about living as one of the family with the widow of his father's late partner. He soon fell in love with the young girl, who was a very tolerable match for him, and proposed for her. Mme. Percier, a sickly and rather melancholy woman, consulted with Marthe, as a matter of form, and this business-like marriage was celebrated within less than six months of M. Daubrel's arrival in France.

Mme. Percier saw in the union a means of avoiding a separation from her daughter, her son-in-law having to remain at the head of the business house in Paris. As for Marthe, who was fancy free, notwithstanding that she had a tender heart and a rather romantic mind, she had accepted without enthusiasm, but also without repugnance, the first husband that was offered to her.

The death of her father having happened at the time when she was about to make her entry into the world as a woman, she had not up to that moment met with any one who especially pleased her. She could be certain that M. Daubrel was an excellent man, rather commonplace perhaps, but presentable enough, and even fairly good-looking, who would no doubt do his best to make her happy.

His means were far above those of his young wife. Her dowry was only about four thousand pounds, while he had in hand nearly twice as much, leaving out of account what his father would bequeath him at his death, and the considerable profits he derived from the commission house at the head of which he was in France.

After their marriage, M. and Mme. Daubrel set up housekeeping in a handsome suite of rooms in the Faubourg Poissonniere, hard by the merchant's office; and for three years everything went smoothly.

Raymond was neither very demonstrative nor very pa.s.sionate in his love, and Marthe felt only a calm and honest affection for her husband; but this moderate conjugal sentiment seemed enough for both of them. Their temperament led them to dream of nothing more. Mme. Daubrel became the mother of a son that she worshiped. Her husband was consistently kind and attentive to her, refusing her none of the pleasures which his easy circ.u.mstances warranted him in allowing: in the winter, the theaters and an occasional ball, in the summer a couple of months at the sea-side at Dieppe or Trouville, outings during which Mme. Percier accompanied her daughter, so that she might not be left alone when M. Daubrel was kept in or called back to Paris by his business.

There was, therefore, in this middle-cla.s.s but fairly refined and tolerably active life, all that was necessary for the happiness of a young woman reared simply and in good moral principles; or there would have been, had not its very monotony, regularity, and calmness roused in Marthe's mind aspirations, which she herself at first scarcely understood, for rather more stir and excitement. She was not likely to find with the Meyrins what she lacked.

Mme. Frantz, we know, was nothing if not staid. There was capital music at her house, but not much conversation; and the auditors at her matinees were changed too often for an enduring acquaintance to be formed among them. It resulted from this that the pretty Mme. Daubrel had not a single woman friend such as women love to tell their petty sorrows to, and that her life seemed to her very dull and drear.

As long, however, as her son was an infant, that is, while her care over and watchfulness of him were needed at every hour, Marthe triumphed over the weariness of her mode of life; but when the child was handed to the care of a nurse, the young mother felt herself alone; her husband was scarcely seen except at meal times, and not unfrequently he returned home at night so tired out that he would go straight from table to his bed.

Nor was Mme. Percier a very agreeable companion for her daughter. Being in poor health, she rarely left her home, and often several days would pa.s.s without Marthe seeing her. The widow, for that matter, would not have understood what there was for her daughter to complain of. She had led a very calm and pa.s.sionless life. She would have laughed at, or perhaps sharply blamed, her daughter for not being perfectly happy.

It was inevitable that Mme. Daubrel should soon find the days long and the evenings endless. She took to reading, first the Parisian newspapers--echoes of the scandal of love affairs which up to now had been matters of indifference to her--then the novels of the day. She took a feverish interest in the heroines of love stories, comparing their lives with her own, and contrasted the male characters with her husband, always to his disadvantage.

M. Daubrel naturally saw nothing of what was going on. If he sometimes noticed the care-worn face or paler complexion of his wife, he attributed the change to a slight ailment, and would offer her some trifling amus.e.m.e.nt or outing, which Marthe would refuse with a constrained smile.

In this frame of mind, in this hunger of soul and weariness of everything, Mme. Daubrel was in the fourth year of her marriage when she went with her mother to Luchon.