Tremorel had by no means the implacable character of an assassin;
he was only feeble and cowardly; yet he had committed abominable
crimes. All his guilt came from the first feeling of envy with
which he regarded Sauvresy, and which he had not taken the pains
to subdue. Laurence, when, on the day that she became enamoured
of Tremorel, she permitted him to press her hand, and kept it from
her mother, was lost. The hand-pressure led to the pretence of
suicide in order to fly with her lover. It might also lead to
infanticide.
Poor Laurence, when she was left alone by Hector's departure to the
Faubourg St. Germain, on receiving M. Lecoq's letter, began to
reflect upon the events of the past year. How unlooked-for and
rapidly succeeding they had been! It seemed to her that she had
been whirled along in a tempest, without a second to think or act
freely. She asked herself if she were not a prey to some hideous
nightmare, and if she should not presently awake in her pretty
maidenly chamber at Orcival. Was it really she who was there in
a strange house, dead to everyone, leaving behind a withered memory,
reduced to live under a false name, without family or friends
henceforth, or anyone in the world to help her feebleness, at the
mercy of a fugitive like herself, who was free to break to-morrow
the bonds of caprice which to-day bound him to her? Was it she,
too, who was about to become a mother, and found herself suffering
from the excessive misery of blushing for that maternity which is
the pride of pure young wives? A thousand memories of her past
life flocked through her brain and cruelly revived her despair.
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