Then he bowed again ceremoniously, ushered out his wife, who had remained silent, and went out himself with so stiff an air that the notary no longer smiled.
As soon as they got home, Du Roy abruptly closed the door, and throwing his hat onto the bed, said: “You were Vaudrec’s mistress.”
Madeleine, who was taking off her veil, turned round with a start, exclaiming: “I? Oh!”
“Yes, you. A man does not leave the whole of his fortune to a woman, unless—”
She was trembling, and was unable to remove the pins fastening the transparent tissue. After a moment’s reflection she stammered, in an agitated tone: “Come, come—you are mad—you are—you are. Did not you, yourself, just now have hopes that he would leave us something?”
George remained standing beside her, following all her emotions like a magistrate seeking to note the least faltering on the part of an accused. He said, laying stress on every word: “Yes, he might have left something to me, your husband—to me, his friend—you understand, but not to you—my wife. The distinction is capital, essential from the point of propriety and of public opinion.”
Madeleine in turn looked at him fixedly in the eyes, in profound and singular fashion, as though seeking to read something there, as though trying to discover that unknown part of a human being which we never fathom, and of which we can scarcely even catch rapid glimpses in those moments of carelessness or inattention, which are like doors left open, giving onto the mysterious depths of the mind. She said slowly: “It seems to me, however, that a legacy of this importance would have been looked on as at least equally strange left to you.”
He asked abruptly: “Why so?”