"He would help me if I called upon him for aid," she thought.
She had no time to temporize or to reflect; she wrote to him
immediately, giving the letter in charge of a youth in the neighborhood.
"The gentleman says you may rely upon him," said the messenger on his
return.
That very evening Marie-Anne heard someone rap at her door. It was the
kind-hearted old man who had come to her relief.
He remained at the Borderie nearly a fortnight.
When he departed one morning, before daybreak, he took away with him
under his large cloak an infant--a boy--whom he had sworn to cherish as
his own child.
CHAPTER XLII
To quit Sairmeuse without any display of violence had cost Blanche an
almost superhuman effort.
The wildest anger convulsed her soul at the very moment, when, with
an assumption of melancholy dignity, she murmured those words of
forgiveness.
Ah! had she obeyed the dictates of her resentment!
But her indomitable vanity aroused within her the heroism of a gladiator
dying on the arena, with a smile upon his lips.
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