"Perhaps honorable peasant blood may be cleaner than a king's bastard," returned miladi scornfully.
"You have my most fervent sympathy," and M. Destournier wrung the lover's hand. "But it would be ill work marrying a woman who did not care for you. Perhaps another year"—should he give him hope? It was such an honest, earnest face, and he would have been brave to set at naught family tradition.
They went down the winding stair together. Rose was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, you will watch over her?" M. Boullé cried, with a lover's desperation.
"Do not fear. She has been like a child to me. No harm shall come to her."
Miladi in her transport of rage tore the handkerchief she held in her hand to shreds, and stamped her foot on the floor.
"She shall never come in this house again, the deceitful, ungrateful wretch. And he shall not care for her, or befriend her in any way. She must love him, and it is no child's love, either. Why, I have been blind and silly all this last year."
Rose had flown out of the house, across the gardens and the settlement to the woods, where she had spent so many delightful hours. She threw herself down on the moss and the fragrant pine needles, and gave way to a fit of weeping that seemed to rend both soul and body. Was she an outcast? Oh, it could not be that M. Destournier would forsake her. But she could ask nothing from him, and miladi would never see her again. Why could she not have loved M. Boullé? Did it take so much love to be a man's wife? to be held in his arms and kissed, to live with him day by day—and she shuddered at the thought.
But she was young, and the flood of tears subsided. She sat up, leaning against a stout pine. Then she rose and peered about. Was it true that M. Boullé was to go away? What if he came and found her again?
She crawled out cautiously, and looked up at the sun. It had passed the meridian. She was hungry, so she searched about and found some berries, but she longed for something more substantial. For the first time solitude seemed to pall upon her. She felt as if everything had been swept away.