Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/274

 “And you have also a key!” cried Massin, creeping like a cat and seizing a key which Ursule’s movement had dislodged from the folds of her bodice.

“That,” she said, reddening, “is the key of his study, he was sending me there at the moment he died.”

After having exchanged hideous smiles, the two heirs looked at the justice of the peace expressive of withering suspicion. Ursule, observing and guessing the meaning of this look, calculated with the postmaster, involuntary on the part of Massin, stood up on her feet, and turned as pale as if the blood were leaving her; her eyes darted that lightning which, it may be, only flashes at the cost of life, and she said, in a choking voice:

“Ah! Monsieur Bongrand, all that is in this room comes to me from my godfather’s kindness, they may take all, I have only the clothes upon me, I will go out and never re-enter it again.”

She went to her guardian’s room, from which no entreaties could move her, for the heirs were a little ashamed of their behavior. She told La Bougival to engage two rooms for her at the inn of La Vieille-Poste, until she should have found some lodging in town where they could both live. She went back to her room to fetch her prayer-book, and remained all night with the curé, the curate and Savinien, praying and weeping. The nobleman came after his mother had gone to bed, and knelt down without a word beside Ursule, who gave him the saddest