“But you need not. We have planned that. I will be a son to him in all his declining years. No, you need never be separated.”
“Then you will stay!” exultingly. If she could once conquer she would be generous and consent afterward. Did not love yield everything?
“I must go. We three will go.” His breath came in a gasp, his eyes deepened with fervor, he caught both her hands; he could have clasped her in his arms in a transport of rapture. Only—she stood up so straight and resolute.
“So you have planned all this!” she cried in a passion that had a pang for her as well as him. “And I am not anywhere. It makes no difference what I want. I am like any bale of merchandise tossed from one to the other. That is all a woman is worth! But you will find I am not to be bandied about.”
She had lashed her emotion into tears, and pulled away her hands with an impatient gesture.
“Heaven above knows what you are worth to both of us. No one will ever love you more truly, more devotedly.”
Renée de Longueville fled swiftly away.
[CHAPTER XX—WHEN A WOMAN WILL]
“What ails the child?” inquired Mère Lunde. “She has not been like herself the last fortnight. And now she is in there, crying as if her heart would break. It is all that André Valbonais, I know. Why does he not marry her and be done with it?”
“But if she will not?” Gaspard Denys shrugged his shoulders and drew his brow into a frown.