I could honestly promise that.
My one chance of saving her lay in keeping from her knowledge the course that I had now determined to pursue.
I rose to go, while my resolution still sustained me.
The sooner I made my inquiries (I reminded her) the more speedily our present doubts and difficulties would be resolved.
She rose, as I rose—with the tears in her eyes, and the blush on her cheeks.
"Kiss me," she whispered, "before you go!
And don't mind my crying.
I am quite happy now.
It is only your goodness that overpowers me."
I pressed her to my heart, with the unacknowledged tenderness of a parting embrace.
It was impossible to disguise the position in which I had now placed myself. I had, so to speak, pronounced my own sentence of banishment.
When my interference had restored my unworthy rival to his freedom, could I submit to the degrading necessity of seeing her in his presence, of speaking to her under his eyes?
That sacrifice of myself was beyond me—and I knew it.
"For the last time!"
I thought, as I held her to me for a moment longer—"for the last time!"
The child ran to meet me with open arms when I stepped out on the landing.
My manhood had sustained me through the parting with the mother.
It was only when the child's round, innocent little face laid itself lovingly against mine that my fortitude gave way.
I was past speaking; I put her down gently in silence, and waited on the lower flight of stairs until I was fit to face the world outside.
CHAPTER XXIX. OUR DESTINIES PART US.
DESCENDING to the ground-floor of the house, I sent to request a moment's interview with the landlady.
I had yet to learn in which of the London prisons Van Brandt was confined; and she was the only person to whom I could venture to address the question.
Having answered my inquiries, the woman put her own sordid construction on my motive for visiting the prisoner.
"Has the money you left upstairs gone into his greedy pockets already?" she asked.
"If I was as rich as you are, I should let it go.
In your place, I wouldn't touch him with a pair of tongs!"
The woman's coarse warning actually proved useful to me; it started a new idea in my mind!
Before she spoke, I had been too dull or too preoccupied to see that it was quite needless to degrade myself by personally communicating with Van Brandt in his prison.
It only now occurred to me that my legal advisers were, as a matter of course, the proper persons to represent me in the matter—with this additional advantage, that they could keep my share in the transaction a secret even from Van Brandt himself.
I drove at once to the office of my lawyers.
The senior partner—the tried friend and adviser of our family—received me.
My instructions, naturally enough, astonished him.
He was immediately to satisfy the prisoner's creditors, on my behalf, without mentioning my name to any one.
And he was gravely to accept as security for repayment—Mr. Van Brandt's note of hand!
"I thought I was well acquainted with the various methods by which a gentleman can throw away his money," the senior partner remarked.
"I congratulate you, Mr. Germaine, on having discovered an entirely new way of effectually emptying your purse.
Founding a newspaper, taking a theater, keeping race-horses, gambling at Monaco, are highly efficient as modes of losing money.
But they all yield, sir, to paying the debts of Mr. Van Brandt!"
I left him, and went home.
The servant who opened the door had a message for me from my mother.
She wished to see me as soon as I was at leisure to speak to her.
I presented myself at once in my mother's sitting-room.
"Well, George?" she said, without a word to prepare me for what was coming.
"How have you left Mrs. Van Brandt?"
I was completely thrown off my guard.
"Who has told you that I have seen Mrs. Van Brandt?" I asked.
"My dear, your face has told me.
Don't I know by this time how you look and how you speak when Mrs. Van Brandt is in your mind.
Sit down by me.
I have something to say to you which I wanted to say this morning; but, I hardly know why, my heart failed me.