And this, then, is your fashion of proving your love?
Nourvady.
If I had had any other at my disposal, I should have employed it. I love you (changing his tone, and approaching her). I have loved you madly for years. (She recoils involuntarily from the movement of Nourvady.) Fear nothing: I dishonour you, perhaps, in the eyes of others, but I respect you; and you are sacred to me. If ever you are mine, it will only be with your consent; that is, when you will have said, "I return your love." I know well all the kinds of love one can buy! It is not for a love such as that I ask: you would not give it to me, and I do not wish for it from you. You are beautiful; I love you; and you have a great grief, a trouble, a common-place preoccupation, beneath your consideration, that one of your race and character ought never to know. On account of what? On account of some bank notes; of a few hundred pounds that you are in want of; and that I have in such profusion that I know not what to do with them. This grief—this annoyance—may cause you to lose your repose; may cost you your beauty—even your life; for you are a woman who would die in the face of an obstacle that you could not conquer. I have what is wanted to dispel this grief and care. I do it, therefore. Was it necessary to ask your permission? If I had seen your horse running away with you, should I have asked your permission to help you? I should have rushed to your horse's head and saved you, or he would have passed over my body. If I had saved your life, and survived, you would, perhaps, have loved me for that heroic act: if I had been killed, you would certainly have been sorry, and have wept for me. I have not exposed my life in saving you as I have done: I have not accomplished an act of heroism, I have only done a thing that was very easy for me; but I could not control the circumstances.
Lionnette.
Ah! Well, your devotion led you astray, Sir; and if I am in your house, it is to call upon you to repair—before it be irremediable—the harm you have done.
Nourvady.
It is out of my power to do anything myself. I have expressly employed this method because I knew it to be the only one, and irremediable. It would be now necessary that your creditors should consent to take back their bills, and give back their money. Do you think they would consent to that?
Lionnette.
This, then, is what you said to yourself: This woman that I respect, esteem, and love, I am going first to compromise and dishonour her in the eyes of everybody; I am going to make her despised, insulted, and turned out of doors by her husband; and, the first emotion over, she will have nothing left to choose; she will take up her part, and will then be mine.
Nourvady.