“That is as it may happen,” smilingly replied Lectoure; “for example, if I were about to marry an old dowager.”
“In short,” rejoined Marguerite, in a more determined tone, “I beg your pardon, sir, if I have been mistaken; I thought, perhaps, that with regard to the alliance proposed between us, you had formed some idea of reciprocity of feeling.”
“Never!” cried Lectoure, interrupting her, for he appeared as eager to avoid the frank explanation, which Marguerite desired, as she seemed to provoke it. “Never! and above all, since I have seen you, I could not hope to be worthy of your love. And yet my name, my position in society, notwithstanding I should fail to influence your heart, may yet give me a title to your hand.”
“But how, sir,” said Marguerite, timidly, “how can you separate the one from the other?”
“As do three-fourths of the people who get married, mademoiselle,” replied Lectoure, with a carelessness which would have at once deterred the confidence of a woman less candid than Marguerite. “A man marries in order to have a wife, the wife to have a husband; it is a social compact, an arrangement of convenience. What can love have to do in a matter of this nature?”
“Your pardon, sir; perhaps I have not clearly expressed my meaning,” continued Marguerite, making an effort to control her feelings, and to conceal from the man upon whom her future fate depended, the impression his words had produced upon her mind. “But you must attribute my hesitation, sir, to the timidity of a young girl, compelled by imperious circumstances to speak on such a subject.”
“Not at all, mademoiselle,” replied Lectoure, bowing and giving to his voice a tone which nearly approached raillery; “on the contrary, you speak like Clarissa Harlowe, and all you say is as clear as daylight. God has endowed me with a mind sufficiently quick-sighted perfectly to comprehend things which are but hinted at.”
“How, sir!” cried Marguerite, “you comprehend what I had the intention of saying, and you allow me to continue? How would it be if on looking deeply into my heart and interrogating all its feelings, I found it impossible to love—to love the person who had been presented to me as my future husband?”
“Why,” replied Lectoure, in the same sarcastic tone in which he had before spoken, “in my opinion the best course to pursue would be not to tell him of it.”
“And why not, sir?”