Mlle. Fouchette Part 78

"h.e.l.lo, Jean!"

"Henri, mon ami!"

Recalled partially to his senses, Jean embraced his old friend after the effusive, dramatic French fas.h.i.+on. They kissed each other's cheeks, as if they were brothers who had been long parted.

"We will begin again, Henri," said Jean,--"from this moment we will begin again. Forgive me----"

"There!" cried Henri, "let us not go into that. We have both of us need of forgiveness,--I most of all. As you say, let us begin again.

And in making a good start, permit me to present you to my sister Andree, whom you have met before, and, I have reason to believe, wish to meet again. I have brought her along without consulting you, first because she insists on going where I go, next as an evidence of good faith and a pledge of our future good-will. Mademoiselle Remy, mon cher ami."

"No apology is necessary for bringing in the suns.h.i.+ne with you, mon ami," said Jean, bending over the small hand.

"Monsieur Marot is complimentary," said Mlle. Remy.

For a moment her eyes drooped beneath his ardent gaze.

"But, then, I know him so well," she quickly added, recovering her well-bred self-possession,--"yes, brother Henri has often talked about you, and I have seen you----"

There was a faint self-consciousness apparent here. And he knew that she was thinking of his lonely watches in front of her place of residence.

They rapidly exchanged the usual courtesies of the day, in the usual elaborate and ornate Parisian fas.h.i.+on.

Mlle. Fouchette saw every minute detail of this meeting with an expression of intense concern. She weighed every look and word and gesture in the delicate, tremulous balance of love's understanding.

And she realized that Jean's way was clear at last, and at the same time saw the consequences to herself.

Well, was not this precisely what she had schemed and labored to bring about?

Yet she stole away un.o.bserved to the little kitchen, and there turned her face to the wall and covered her ears with her hands, as if to shut it all out. Her eyes were dry, but her heart was drenched with tears.

Meanwhile, the elder Marot, who had risen politely upon the entrance of Lerouge and his sister, stood apparently transfixed by the scene.

At the sight of Andree his face a.s.sumed a curious mixture of eagerness and uncertainty. Upon the mention of her name the uncertainty disappeared. A flood of light seemed to burst upon him with the encomiums showered upon his son.

When Jean turned towards his father--being reminded by a plucking of the sleeve--he was confounded to behold a face of smiles instead of the one recently clouded with parental wrath.

"This is m-my father, Monsieur Lerouge,--Mademoiselle----"

"What? Monsieur Marot? Why, this is a double pleasure!" exclaimed Lerouge, briskly seizing the outstretched hand. "The father of a n.o.ble son must perforce be a n.o.ble father. So Andree says, and Andree has good intuitions.--Here, Andree; Jean's father! Just to think of meeting him on an occasion like this!"

Neither Lerouge nor his sister knew of the estrangement between Jean and his home. They had puzzled their heads in vain as to the reasons for Jean's retirement to the Rue St. Jacques, but were inclined to attribute it to politics or business reverses.

"Ah! so this is Monsieur Lerouge,--of Nantes," remarked the old gentleman when he got an opening.

"Of Nantes," repeated Lerouge.

"And this is Andree,--bless your sweet face!--and--and,"--turning a quizzical look on the wondering Jean,--"and 'the woman'!"

It was now Lerouge's turn to be astonished. Jean and the girl attempted to conceal their rising color by casting their eyes upon the floor. Marot pere was master of the situation.

"Your father was a noted surgeon," he continued, still holding the girl's hand.

"One of the best of his time," said Henri, proudly.

"And your mother----"

"Is dead, monsieur."

"Ah!"

The look of pain that pa.s.sed swiftly over M. Marot's face was reflected in an audible sigh.

"One of the best of women," he went on, musingly,--"and you are the living image of your mother when I last saw her. Her name, too----"

"Oh, monsieur!" interrupted Andree, excitedly, "you knew my mother, then?"

"So well, my dear girl, that I asked her to be my wife."

"Ah!"

"Oh, monsieur!"

"Father!"

"That is the truth. It is the additional truth that my cousin, the doctor, got her."

"My father was your cousin?" asked Lerouge. "Why, I come right by the family resemblance, Jean!"

"Yes," laughingly retorted the latter, "and the family temper."

"I was not aware that your mother again married," observed M. Marot.

"Yes,--Monsieur Frederic Remy, the father of Andree, here," said Henri. "Alas! neither he nor my mother long survived the loss of their younger daughter."

"Then there is yet another child?"

"Was," replied the young man, sadly. "For Louise, who was two years younger than Andree, disappeared one day----"

"Disappeared!"

"Yes; and has never been heard of to this date. She was scarcely three years old. Whether she wandered away or was stolen, is dead or living, we do not know. She was never seen again."

"What a terrible blow! What a terrible blow!" murmured the elder Marot, thinking of the unhappy mother.

Mlle. Fouchette had reappeared a few moments before,--just in time to hear this family history. But she immediately returned to the kitchen, where she sank upon a low stool and bowed her face in her hands.

"Fouchette! Here, Fouchette!"

It was Jean's peremptory voice.