Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/266

 him when they made their wills. I would undergo great sacrifices for that." She looked at him, and suddenly her eyes and lashes were brilliant with tears. "Do you think it is very brutal of me—to have been so great a hypocrite for my son's sake?"

When she looked at him as she did look then, through that quivering diamond brightness, he had no more doubt of her at all; he was overwhelmed by the thought that the superb creature, always until then so bravely and surely poised, now wept before him, trusted him with her tears.

He caught both her hands in his. "Aurélie!" he said. "I think only—only that you're divine."

She drew her hands away, laughing ruefully. "No. You think I suffered all that because I am mercenary. That is what you think."

"Never, never!" he protested. "I do understand. Give me the chance to be kind, as you asked me."

"Do you truly wish to be?"

"You know that I do."

"Then don't distrust me any more," she said; and her wan smile ineffably touched him.

"You'll have no more distrust from me," he said. "Was that the last thing you had to bear from Mademoiselle Daurel—distrust?"