Mauprat
expression. He was so convinced of my crime that all my denials only served to alienate his pity. Marcasse still loved me, though he thought I was guilty. I had no one in the world to answer for my innocence, except myself.
"If you insist on returning to the château," exclaimed Patience, "you must swear before you leave here that you will not enter your cousin's room, or your uncle's, without the abbé's permission."
"What I swear is that I am innocent," I replied, "and that I will allow no man to saddle me with a crime. Back, both of you! Let me pass! Patience, if you consider it your duty to denounce me, go and do so. All that I ask is that I may not be condemned without a hearing; I prefer the bar of justice to that of mere opinion."
I rushed out of the cottage and returned to the château. However, not wishing to make a scandal before the servants, and knowing quite well that they could not hide Edmée's real condition from me, I went and shut myself up in the room I usually occupied.
But in the evening, just as I was leaving it to get news of the two patients, Mademoiselle Leblanc again told me that some one wished to speak with me outside. I noticed that her face betrayed a sense of joy as well as fear. I concluded that they had come to arrest me, and I suspected (rightly, as it transpired) that Mademoiselle Leblanc had denounced me. I went to the window, and saw some of the mounted police in the courtyard.
"Good," I said; "let my destiny take its course."
But, before quitting, perhaps forever, this house in which I was leaving my soul, I wished to see Edmée again for the last time. I walked straight to her room.
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