‘No, Gaudin,’ answered the Marchioness; ‘but my father requires, as the price of his protection and countenance, that I should cease to know you.’
The face of Sainte-Croix contracted so suddenly and fiercely that Marie started.
‘What is it that frightens you?’ he asked suddenly.
She hesitated a moment, and then she answered slowly and somewhat sadly—
‘Nothing.’
‘And yet there should—’ retorted Gaudin; but he paused as abruptly as he had begun the sentence. ‘Have I not,’ he added in a gentler and more tranquil tone—‘have I not suffered enough yet to buy your devotion?’
There was ‘Bastille’ in his look. The wily woman was overcome by the wilier man of the world, as though she had been a girl. She clung to him, and pillowed her cheek on his bosom.
‘I will leave you, if it be your wish,’ said Sainte-Croix, as he put her arms away. ‘One word of yours, and I leave you never to return, until—’ and he paused slowly on the words, and uttered them bitterly and deliberately—‘until his death!’
Again she started; but Gaudin noticed it not, or was determined not to notice it.
‘Shall we part?’ he continued, and this time passion gave eloquence to the few words—‘for ever? And yet, if what you have told me of M. d’Aubray’s determination be true, it must be so.’