"Would you try to defend her?" exclaimed Madame Ferailleur. "Do
you really think one can atone for a fault by a crime?"
"No, certainly not, but----"
"Perhaps you would censure the baroness more severely if you knew
what her daughter has suffered--if you knew the perils and
miseries she has been exposed to from the moment her mother left
her on a door-step, near the central markets, till the day when
her father found her. It is a miracle that she did not perish."
Where had Madame Ferailleur learned these particulars? Pascal
asked himself this question without being able to answer it. "I
don't understand you, mother," he faltered.
"Then you know nothing of Mademoiselle Marguerite's past life. Is
it possible she never told you anything about it?"
"I only know that she has been very unhappy."
"Has she never alluded to the time when she was an apprentice?"
"She has only told me that she earned her living with her own
hands at one time of her life."
"Well, I am better informed on the subject."
Pascal's amazement was changed to terror. "You, mother, you!"
"Yes; I--I have been to the asylum where she was received and
educated. I have had a conversation with two Sisters of Charity
who remember her, and it is scarcely an hour since I left the
people to whom she was formerly bound as an apprentice."
Standing opposite his mother with one hand convulsively clutching
the back of the chair he was leaning on, Pascal tried to nerve
himself for some terrible blow.
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