"These letters are
admirable," she said at last; "and no young girl, reared by a
virtuous mother, could have given better expression to nobler
sentiments; but----" She paused, not wishing to wound her son's
feelings, and as he insisted, she added:
"But, these letters have the irreparable fault of being addressed
to you, Pascal!"
This, however, was the expiring cry of her intractable obstinacy.
"Now," she resumed, "wait before you censure your mother." So
saying, she rose, opened a drawer, and taking from it a torn and
crumpled scrap of paper, she handed it to her son, exclaiming:
"Read this attentively."
This proved to be the note in pencil which Madame Leon had given
to Pascal, and which he had divined rather than read by the light
of the street-lamp; he had handed it to his mother on his return,
and she had kept it. He had scarcely been in his right mind the
evening he received it, but now he was enjoying the free exercise
of all his faculties. He no sooner glanced at the note than he
sprang up, and in an excited voice, exclaimed, "Marguerite never
wrote this!"
The strange discovery seemed to stupefy him. "I was mad, raving
mad!" he muttered. "The fraud is palpable, unmistakable. How
could I have failed to discover it?" And as if he felt the need of
convincing himself that he was not deceived, he continued,
speaking to himself rather than to his mother: "The hand-writing
is not unlike Marguerite's, it's true; but it's only a clever
counterfeit.
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