"It is because I do not love at all!" she exclaimed. "Do you think a woman does not know when she loves? Do you think she can be deceived in that?"
This time she spoke with determination.
The shades of night had now fallen completely, and the moon, which had taken possession of the sky and was reigning there in undisputed sway, lighted up the countenance of Madame de Guéran with a silvery radiance, and enhanced the natural delicacy of her features.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Doctor replied very quietly, without seeming to notice the outburst—
"I agree with you, Baroness, and I have already explained myself on this score. You are not in love. If our friends were to leave you to-morrow, you would forget them. It is their presence alone that makes you uneasy, I had almost said, irritable."
"In that case," replied Madame de Guéran, "my illness is known, and you have found out its cause. M. de Morin and M. Périères inspire me with a vague, indefinable, almost inexplicable interest, and this divided interest," she continued, smilingly, "upsets me, worries me, and is killing me by inches."
"No, no, my dear patient, we have not quite reached that point yet. You are not the woman to allow yourself to be done to death for so little. You are no ignorant girl, to languish and grow thin in such a case as this. The interest—the word is your own—you take in our friends has no such tremendous effect upon you. It does not give rise even to a feeling of remorse when you think of M. de Guéran and your hopes of recovering him. You had every reason to believe yourself to be a widow, and you were one from a legal or official point of view; you could, if you had so wished, have given your whole heart to either of your travelling companions, and one ought really to admire you for not having bestowed even a particle of that interest—shall I call it by that name?—on either of them, even though you were at perfect liberty to withdraw it if you thought fit. Therefore, I repeat, you have nothing wherewith to reproach yourself from this point of view."
"Is there another point, then?" said she, trying to smile, but unable entirely to hide the emotion caused by the last words addressed to her.
"Yes," said M. Delange, earnestly, "you are in love, seriously in love with him who could not accompany you, whose place I took. In other words, you are in love with Dr. Desrioux."