“You have cut her to the heart.”
“I? In what can I have offended her—I who ever since I have known her have lived at her feet like a slave? Speak, I beg you!”
“I will never confess that but to the man—who should read to the bottom of my soul!”
D’Artagnan looked at Kitty for the second time. The young girl had freshness and beauty which many duchesses would have purchased with their coronets.
“Kitty,” said he, “I will read to the bottom of your soul whenever you like; don’t let that disturb you.” And he gave her a kiss at which the poor girl became as red as a cherry.
“Oh, no,” said Kitty, “it is not me you love! It is my mistress you love; you told me so just now.”
“And does that hinder you from letting me know the second reason?”
“The second reason, Monsieur the Chevalier,” replied Kitty, emboldened by the kiss in the first place, and still further by the expression of the eyes of the young man, “is that in love, everyone for herself!”
Then only D’Artagnan remembered the languishing glances of Kitty, her constantly meeting him in the antechamber, the corridor, or on the stairs, those touches of the hand every time she met him, and her deep sighs; but absorbed by his desire to please the great lady, he had disdained the soubrette. He whose game is the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow.
But this time our Gascon saw at a glance all the advantage to be derived from the love which Kitty had just confessed so innocently, or so boldly: the interception of letters addressed to the Comte de Wardes, news on the spot, entrance at all hours into Kitty’s chamber, which was contiguous to her mistress’s. The perfidious deceiver was, as may plainly be perceived, already sacrificing, in intention, the poor girl in order to obtain Milady, willy-nilly.