“And what then?” he asked.
“You have a perfect right,” said Damier, “to ask what business it is of mine, and I can only answer that I, too, am a trusted friend of Madame Vicaud’s, and, Monsieur Daunay, a friend whom she can trust.”
“Ah, Monsieur Damier, you have—I do not deny it—more rights than I, who have none,” said Daunay, in a voice the bitterness of which was a revelation to Damier. “I have no rights, only misfortunes. Why not add that you are Madame Vicaud’s trusted friend, and that you, too, love her daughter?”
Damier felt a relief disproportionate, he realized, to any suspicions he had allowed himself to recognize. The atmosphere, after the unexpected thunderclap, was immensely cleared. Monsieur Daunay was jealous, and Monsieur Daunay was evidently piteous only. With all the vigor of a sudden release from bondage, he exclaimed: “You are utterly mistaken; I have no such rights: I do not love Mademoiselle Vicaud.”
“What do you say?” Monsieur Daunay’s astonishment was almost blank.
“I do not love her in the very least.”
“Then,” stammered the Frenchman, “we are not rivals? You can then pity me—I am jealous with none of the rights of jealousy.”
“None of the rights?” Damier eyed him.
“None, monsieur; Madame Vicaud’s trust in me is not unfounded,” said Monsieur Daunay, with something of a slightly ludicrous grandiloquence.
“Yet Mademoiselle Vicaud knows of your attachment.”