vely distraught,
said:

"What? What did you say? The awful fate?... Then you believe... you
believe..."

"I really believe," said Lupin, who felt how greatly this threat upset
her, "I really believe that, if I am not in time, Gilbert and Vaucheray
are done for."

"Be quiet!... Be quiet!" she cried, clutching him fiercely. "Be
quiet!... You mustn't say that... There is no reason... It's just you
who suppose..."

"It's not only I, it's Gilbert as well..."

"What? Gilbert? How do you know?"

"From himself?"

"From him?"

"Yes, from Gilbert, who has no hope left but in me; from Gilbert, who
knows that only one man in the world can save him and who, a few days
ago, sent me a despairing appeal from prison. Here is his letter."

She snatched the paper greedily and read in stammering accents:

"Help, governor!... I am frightened!... I am frightened!..."

She dropped the letter. Her hands fluttered in space. It was as though
her staring eyes beheld the sinister vision which had already so often
terrified Lupin. She gave a scream of horror, tried to rise and fainted.

CHAPTER V. THE TWENTY-SEVEN

The child was sleeping peacefully on the bed. The mother did not move
from the sofa on which Lupin had laid her; but her easier breathing and
the blood which was now returning to her face announced her impending
recovery from her swoon.

He observed that she wore a wedding-ring. Seeing a locket hanging from
her bodice, he stooped and, turning it, found a miniature photograph
representing a man of about forty and a lad--a stripling rather--in a
schoolboy's uniform. He studied the fresh, young face set in curly hair:

"It's as I thought," he said. "Ah, poor woman!"

The hand which he took between his grew warmer by degrees. The eyes
opened, then closed again. She murmured:

"Jacques..."

"Do not distress yourself... it's all right he's asleep."

She recovered consciousness entirely. But, as she did not speak, Lupin
put questions to her, to make her feel a gradual need of unbosoming
herself. And he said, pointing to the locket:

"The schoolboy is Gilbert, isn't he?"

"Yes," she said.

"And Gilbert is your son?"

She gave a shiver and whispered:

"Yes, Gilbert is my son, my eldest son."

So she was the mother of Gilbert, of Gilbert the prisoner at the Sante,
relentlessly pursued by the authorities and now awaiting his trial for
murder!

Lupin continued:

"And the other portrait?"

"My husband."