point Daniel interrupted her.
“Do you think I am a coward?” he asked. “I am only ignorant. Life frightens me because I do not know it, and it appears all black to me. But I will enter it with a firm will if you are concerned in its purpose. Speak! What is my mission to be?”
Blanche drew him near her and in a low voice, as if she was afraid of being overheard, she said:
“You have seen my little girl, my poor Jeanne, who was playing here just now. She has just turned six. I am going away without knowing her, so to speak, without being able to tell whether there is good or bad in her. This uncertainty doubles my sufferings and makes death indeed awful to me. And I say to myself: I am leaving this child quite alone. I reflect that perhaps she will, like me, be wounded by hardhearted people, and may be she will not have the courage I have had in facing it.” With a wave of her hand, the dying woman seemed to drive away a disturbing vision.
“I said to myself,” she continued, “I should always be near her, preparing a happy life for her, training her heart. When I felt death coming I sought for some one to fill my place and I found none. My parents are dead.
I have led a cloistered life. I have made no friends, and Monsieur de Rionne has only one sister, given up to luxury, in whom Jeanne would find a bad example, and I am terrified at the very thought of my husband taking charge of her. I have told you enough for you to understand the fear that seizes me when I contemplate my little girl falling into his hands. I wish to protect my child from him.”
Once again she paused and then added: “You see now, my friend, what your mission is. The task I give you is to watch over my child. I desire you to be as a guardian angel to her.”
Daniel knelt down, and he trembled with emotion. He was unable to speak, and the only answer he could give, the only thanks he could give utterance to, was to kiss Madame de Rionne’s hand.
“It is a hard task,” she said as she went on, “I am imposing upon you. Death presses me close, and I must hurry on without knowing how much you will be able to accomplish. I dare not think of difficulties in store for you, or the strange part you will have to play. Heaven has been good in sending you here, and in granting this consolation to my heart. And heaven will still be kind, and help you in your trust, and guard you in your perils. Only, remember my last wish, and walk firmly on. I trust to your devotion.”
At last Daniel, full of emotion, was able to speak.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” he exclaimed. “Now I shall truly live. How good of you to have thought of me, to have had confidence in me! You shower benefits upon me even to the last.”
A motion from Blanche interrupted him.
“Let me finish. My pride prevented me from withholding my money from my husband; what he asked me for I granted him. At the present moment I have no idea how we stand. No doubt my daughter will be poor, and it is almost pleasant for me to think so. I only regret not to be able to leave you some money.”
“Regret nothing,” cried Daniel. “I will work. Heaven will provide for all.”
The dying woman was failing fast. Her head slid on to the pillow; but, speaking with difficulty, she continued:
“So all goes well. I have opened my heart to you; now I feel calm, now I can die content. You will watch over Jeanne; you will be a friend to her; you must protect her against the world. Follow her, step by step, as closely as possible; keep her from danger, awaken every good quality of her heart. But, above all, marry her to a worthy man; then your task will be accomplished. When a woman marries a bad man, as I know to my cost, the solitude of desertion is fearful, and it requires great determination not to make a mistake and fall. Whatever happens, do not forsake her. Remember constantly that your good angel, on her deathbed, besought you to be faithful to your mission. Do you swear it?”
“I swear it,” murmured Daniel, ‘midst suffocating sobs.
Blanche closed her eyes like a child going to sleep, then she slowly opened them again.
“All this is terrible, my child,” she murmured. “I know not what the future has in store for you; I foresee, however, great obstacles. But, nevertheless, heaven, as you said, will provide for everything.... Kiss me.”
Daniel, confused, bent over her and set his quivering lips on the pale forehead of Madame de Rionne. The poor woman, with closed eyes, smiled faintly, while receiving that solemn kiss of devotion and love.
Night had now quite set in; the stars could be seen twinkling in the clear sky. A sound of footsteps was heard and a chambermaid entered, bearing a lamp; she drew near the dying woman.
“Here is your husband, madame,” said she.
And as Daniel returned to his place in the window recess, Monsieur de Rionne came in, terror-stricken.
CHAPTER II
BLANCHE was born in the south near Marseilles. At twenty-three years of age she married Monsieur de Rionne. She had a noble heart, and with a foreknowledge of the miseries of the world she made a rigid and lofty rule of conduct for herself. Her strength lay in her upright principles, and fully - determined will. She married to comply with her father’s wish, without seeking to know Monsieur de Rionne, saying to herself, with a sort of innocent pride, that she would, if necessary, learn how to suffer patiently and keep her self-respect, and she did so. Her husband was indeed a fascinating man, wonderfully polite and elegant, but a really miserable creature, who might have been good, but who preferred remaining bad.
He had a deplorable weakness: a profound cowardice with respect to vice. Yet with all that, his sentiments were the most beautiful in the world, and his heart was open to every kind of pity. He did evil with full consciousness, without any shame, and he knew equally well how to do good, when he chose. But doing good had no interest for him.
He toyed at first with his wife, as he would have toyed with a mistress. She was charming; she had about her a perfume of virtue and modesty that he inhaled for the first time in his life. Afterwards his wife palled upon him. In this delicate creature he found so strong a will and such calm nobility that in the end he grew almost to be afraid of her. In the cowardice of his heart he began to hate this unconquerable courage. So as not to appear weak before Blanche he avoided her more and more; he set up hard comparisons in his conscience when in the presence of his beautiful-charactered wife, and there was nothing he dreaded so much as the disagreeable voice of remorse which constantly disturbed him in his gaieties. He resumed his old habits of frivolity and pursuit of loose pleasures, forgetting as quickly as possible that he had a family and ties, too, that should bind him close.
Blanche had certainly loved this man, even though it had been but for a brief period. Afterwards she despised him, and the wound in her heart had, as it were, been seared by a hot iron. Nothing but deep regret was left. She had reckoned on her courage, and her courage gave her heart nothing but a terrible feeling of emptiness. She still remained high-principled, above the shameful things which surrounded her; but her heart bled in that severe loneliness, and she often longed to begin her life again.
Three years after her marriage her father and mother died and she was left an orphan. She no longer had a single relation who could render her any help. Then she endured a bitter loneliness, and took a kind of pleasure in shutting herself up with her year-old daughter. This child
