Second Part Chapter 55

THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON
July 16th.

My dear Louise,--I send this letter by an express before hastening to
the chalet myself. Take courage. Your last letter seemed to me so
frantic, that I thought myself justified, under the circumstances, in
confiding all to Louis; it was a question of saving you from yourself.
If the means we have employed have been, like yours, repulsive, yet
the result is so satisfactory that I am certain you will approve. I
went so far as to set the police to work, but the whole thing remains
a secret between the prefect, ourselves and you.

In one word, Gaston is a jewel! But here are the facts. His brother,
Louis Gaston, died at Calcutta, while in the service of a mercantile
company, when he was on the very point of returning to France, a rich,
prosperous, married man, having received a very large fortune with his
wife, who was the widow of an English merchant. For ten years he had
worked hard that he might be able to send home enough to support his
brother, to whom he was devotedly attached, and from whom his letters
generously concealed all his trials and disappointments.

Then came the failure of the great Halmer house; the widow was ruined,
and the sudden shock affected Louis Gaston's brain. He had no mental
energy left to resist the disease which attacked him, and he died in
Bengal, whither he had gone to try and realize the remnants of his
wife's property. The dear, good fellow had deposited with a banker a
first sum of three hundred thousand francs, which was to go to his
brother, but the banker was involved in the Halmer crash, and thus
their last resource failed them.