But if he had not
really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it--a
clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs. Bread
had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he apparently
enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to share her
knowledge with him. So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to deal
with, he felt easy. As to what there was to find out, he had only one
fear--that it might not be bad enough. Then, when the image of the
marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side by side,
the old woman's hand in Urbain's arm, and the same cold, unsociable
fixedness in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear was
groundless. There was blood in the secret at the very last! He arrived
at Fleurieres almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself,
logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they would, as
he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets. He remembered
indeed that he must first catch his hare--first ascertain what there was
to expose; but after that, why shouldn't his happiness be as good as new
again? Mother and son would drop their lovely victim in terror and take
to hiding, and Madame de Cintre, left to herself, would surely come back
to him.
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