Then in the morning, when she had wakened from the tardy sleep that
ended this night of agony, a chance accident, commonplace enough, but in
which her piety saw something providential, gave her an unexpected
excuse for pleading, not with the young man at a distance, but with
Madame de Carlsberg herself and at once. While reading distractedly in
bed one of those newspapers of the Riviera, journals of international
snobbism which communicate information concerning all these arrant
aristocrats, she discovered the arrival at Cairo, of M. Olivier du Prat,
secretary of the Embassy, and his wife; and she rose at once to show Ely
these two lines of mundane news, so insignificant, yet so full of menace
for her.
"If they are at Cairo," she said to the Baroness, "it means that their
Nile trip is over, and that they think of returning. What is the natural
route for them? From Alexandria to Marseilles. And if he is so near his
friend, this man will wish to see him."
"It is true," said Ely, her heart beating wildly as she read the letters
of that name, Olivier du Prat.
"It is true," she repeated. "They will meet again. Was I not right last
night?"
"See," cried Louise Brion, "what it would have been if you had not had
thus far the strength to fight against your sentiment. See what it will
be if you do not put an end to it forever."
And she continued describing with all the eloquence of her passionate
friendship a plan of conduct which suddenly occurred to her as the
wisest and most effectual.
"You must take this opportunity which is offered to you. You will never
have a better one. You must have the young man come, and speak to him
yourself about the purchase he made last night. Tell him that others
have seen it; show him your astonishment at his indiscretion; tell him
that his assiduity has been noticed. For the sake of your welfare and
your reputation command him to go away. A little firmness for a few
minutes and it will all be done. He is not what you paint him, what I
feel him to be, if he does not obey your request. Ah! believe me, the
one way to love him is to save him from this tragedy, which is not
simply a far-off possibility, but an immediate and inevitable danger."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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