“Gaston!”

He sadly shook his head, and replied: 

“I am not Gaston, madame.  My brother succumbed to the misery and suffering of exile:  I am Louis de Clameran.”

What! it was not Gaston, then, who had written to her; it was not Gaston who stood before her!

She trembled with terror; her head whirled, and her eyes grew dim.

It was not he!  And she had committed herself, betrayed her secret by calling him “Gaston.”

What could this man want?—­this brother in whom Gaston had never confided?  What did he know of the past?

A thousand probabilities, each one more terrible than the other, flashed across her brain.

Yet she succeeded in overcoming her weakness so that Louis scarcely perceived it.

The fearful strangeness of her situation, the very imminence of peril, inspired her with coolness and self-possession.

Haughtily pointing to a chair, she said to Louis with affected indifference: 

“Will you be kind enough, monsieur, to explain the object of this unexpected visit?”

The marquis, seeming not to notice this sudden change of manner, took a seat without removing his eyes from Mme. Fauvel’s face.

“First of all, madame,” he began, “I must ask if we can be overheard by anyone?”

“Why this question?  You can have nothing to say to me that my husband and children should not hear.”

Louis shrugged his shoulders, and said: 

“Be good enough to answer me, madame; not for my sake, but for your own.”

“Speak, then, monsieur; you will not be heard.”

In spite of this assurance, the marquis drew his chair close to the sofa where Mme. Fauvel sat, so as to speak in a very low tone, as if almost afraid to hear his own voice.

“As I told you, madame, Gaston is dead; and it was I who closed his eyes, and received his last wishes.  Do you understand?”

The poor woman understood only too well, but was racking her brain to discover what could be the purpose of this fatal visit.  Perhaps it was only to claim Gaston’s jewels.

“It is unnecessary to recall,” continued Louis, “the painful circumstances which blasted my brother’s life.  However happy your own lot has been, you must sometimes have thought of this friend of your youth, who unhesitatingly sacrificed himself in defence of your honor.”

Not a muscle of Mme. Fauvel’s face moved; she appeared to be trying to recall the circumstances to which Louis alluded.

“Have you forgotten, madame?” he asked with bitterness:  “then I must explain more clearly.  A long, long time ago you loved my unfortunate brother.”

“Monsieur!”

“Ah, it is useless to deny it, madame:  I told you that Gaston confided everything to me—­everything,” he added significantly.

But Mme. Fauvel was not frightened by this information.  This “everything” could not be of any importance, for Gaston had gone abroad in total ignorance of her secret.