Collected Works (Volume 10); The Clique of Gold (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: longer to live; but God will not pardon you. I fetft it; I shall be avenged. And, if it should require a miracle, that miracle will be done, so as to inform that honorable man who thought you were his friend, how and why the poor girl died whom he had intrusted to your honor. H." The old man was furious. " The honor of Maxime de Brevan!" he growled with a voice of intense hatred,?" the honor of Maxime de Brevan !" But his terrible excitement did not keep him from manipulating the other letter, addressed to Count Ville- Handry, in the same manner. The operation was successful; and, without the slightest hesitation, he read:? " Dear Father,?Broken down with anxiety, and faint from exhaustion, I have waited till this morning for an answer to my humble letter, which I had written to you on my knees. " You have never replied to it; you are inexorable. I see I must die. I shall die. Alas! I can hardly say I die willingly. " I must appear very guilty in your eyes, father, that you should abandon me thus to the hatred of Sarah Brandon and her people. And yet?ah! I have suffered terribly. I have struggled hard before I could make up my mind to leave your house,?the house where my mother had died, where I had been so happy, and so tenderly beloved as a child by both of you. Ah, if you but knew! " And yet it was so little I asked of you!?barely enough to bury my undeserved disgrace in a convent. " Yes, undeserved, father; for I tell you at this hour, when no one utters a falsehood, if my reputation was lost, my honor was not lost." Big tears rolled down the cheeks of the old man; and he said in a half-stifled voice,? " Poor, poor child! And to think that for a whole year I have lived under the same roof with her, without knowing it. But I am here. I am still in ...