The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗

suggested the most energetic resistance, and seemed to be confident of success.

When he at last left Daniel, he had made him promise to keep him hour by hour informed of all that might happen, and, above all, to try every means in his power to unmask Miss Brandon.

“How he hates her!” said Daniel to himself when he was alone,—“how he hates her!”

But this very hatred, which had already troubled him the night before, now disturbed him more and more, and kept him from coming to any decision. The more he reflected, the more it seemed to him that Maxime had allowed himself to be carried away beyond what was probable, or even possible. The last accusation, especially, seemed to him perfectly monstrous.

A young and beautiful woman, consumed by ambition and covetousness, might possibly play a comedy of pure love while she was disgusted in her heart. She might catch by vile tricks a foolish old man, and make him marry her, openly and avowedly selling her beauty and her youth. Such things happen, and are excused by the morality of our day. The same wicked, heartless woman might speculate upon becoming speedily a widow, and thus regaining her liberty, together with a large fortune. This also happens, however horrible it may appear. But that she should marry a poor old fool, with the preconceived purpose of hastening his end by a deliberate crime, there was a depth in that wickedness which terrified Daniel’s imagination.

Deeply ensconced in his chair, he was losing himself in conjectures, forgetting how time passed, and how his work was waiting for him, even the invitation to dinner which the count had given to him, and the prospect of being introduced that very evening to Miss Brandon. Night came; and then only his concierge, who came in to see what had become of him all day long, aroused him from his torpor.

“Ah, I am losing my senses!” he exclaimed, rising suddenly. “And Henrietta, who has been waiting for me—what must she think of me?”

Miss Ville-Handry, at that very moment, had reached that degree of anxiety which becomes well-nigh intolerable. After having waited for Daniel all the evening of the day before, and after having spent a sleepless night, she had surely expected him to-day, counting the seconds by the beating of her heart, and starting at the noise of every carriage in the street. In her despair, knowing hardly what she was doing, she was thinking of running herself to University Street, to Daniel’s house, when the door opened.

In the same indifferent tone in which he announced friends and enemies, the servant said,—

“M. Daniel Champcey.”

Henrietta was up in a moment. She was about to exclaim,—

“What has kept you? What has happened?” But the words died away on her lips.

It had been sufficient for her to look at Daniel’s sad face to feel that a great misfortune had befallen her.

“Ah! you had been right in your fears,” she said, sinking into a chair.

“Alas!”

“Speak: let me know all.”

“Your father has come to me, and offered me your hand, Henrietta, provided I can obtain your consent to his marriage with Miss Brandon. Now, listen to me; and then you can decide.”

Faithful to his promise, he thereupon told her every thing he had learned from Maxime and the count, suppressing only those details which would have made the poor girl blush, and also that terrible charge which he was unwilling to believe.

When he had ended, Henrietta said warmly,—

“What! I should allow my father to marry such a creature? I should sit still and smile when such dishonor and such ruin are coming to a house over which my mother has presided! No; far be it from me ever to be so selfish! I shall oppose Miss Brandon’s plans with all my strength and all my energy.”

“She may triumph, after all.”

“She shall not triumph over my resistance and my contempt. Never—do you hear me, Daniel?—never will I bow down before her. Never shall my hand touch hers. And, if my father persists, I shall ask him, the day before his wedding, to allow me to bury myself in a convent.”

“He will not let you go.”

“Then I shall shut myself up in my room, and never leave it again. I do not think they will drag me out by force.”

There was no mistaking it; she spoke with an earnestness and a determination which nothing could shake or break. And yet the very saddest presentiments oppressed Daniel’s heart. He said,—

“But Miss Brandon will certainly not come alone to this house.”

“Whom will she bring with her?”

“Her relatives, M. Thomas Elgin and Mrs. Brian. Oh Henrietta, dearest Henrietta! to think that you should be exposed to the spite and the persecution of these wretches!”

She raised her head proudly, and replied,—

“I am not afraid of them.” Then she added in a gentler tone,—

“Besides, won’t you always be near me, to advise me, and to protect me in case of danger?”

“I? Don’t you think they will try to part us soon enough?”

“No, Daniel, I know very well that the house will no longer be open to you.”

“Well?”

The poor girl blushed up to the roots of her hair, and, turning her. eyes away from him to avoid his looks, she said,—

“Since they force us to do so, I must needs do a thing a girl, properly speaking, ought not to do. We will meet secretly. I shall have to stoop to win over one of my waiting-women, who may be discreet and obliging enough to aid me, and, through her, I will write to you, and receive your letters.”

But this arrangement did not relieve Daniel from his terrible apprehensions. There was a question which constantly rose to his lips, and which still he did not dare to utter. At last, making a great effort, he asked,—

“And then?”

Henrietta understood perfectly what he meant. She answered,—

“I thought you would be able to wait until the day should come when the law would authorize me to make my own choice.”

“Henrietta!”

She offered him her hand, and said solemnly,—

“And on that day, Daniel, I promise you, if my father still withholds his consent, I will ask you openly for your arm; and then, in broad daylight, before all the world, I shall leave this house never to re-enter it again.”

As quick as thought, Daniel had seized her hand, and,