"No," said the Count, firmly. "I leave it all to you. Put it on her finger and say, 'This is the pledge of love—of love renewed—of Andrea's undying love for you.'" He thrust the symbol of bliss into Captain Dieppe's most reluctant hand. The Captain sat and looked at it in a horrified fascination.
"You will do it for me?" urged the Count. "You can't refuse! Ah, my friend, if my sorrow does n't move you, think of hers. She is alone there in that wing of the house—even her cousin, who was with her, was obliged to leave her three days ago. There she sits, thinking of her faults, poor child, in solitude! Alas, it is only too likely in tears! I can't bear to think of her in tears."
The Captain quite understood that feeling; he had seen her in them.
"You will help us? Your noble nature will force you to it!"
After a moment's hesitation, pardonable surely in weak humanity, Dieppe put the Countess's wedding-ring in his pocket, rose to his feet, and with a firm unfaltering face held out his hand to his friend and host.
"I can refuse you nothing," he said, in most genuine emotion. "I will do what you ask. May it bring happiness to—to—to all of us!" He wrung the Count's hand with a grip that spoke of settled purpose. "You shall hear how I fare very soon," he said, as he made for the door.
The Count nodded hopefully, and, when he was left alone, set to work on a little lyric of joy, with which to welcome the return of his forgiven and forgiving spouse.
But it was hard on Captain Dieppe; the strictest moralist may admit that without endangering his principles. Say the Captain had been blameworthy; still his punishment was heavy—heavy and most woefully prompt. His better nature, his finer feelings, his instincts of honour and loyalty, might indeed respond to the demand made on them by the mission with which his friend entrusted him. But the demand was heavy, the call grievous. Where he had pictured joy, there remained now only renunciation; he had dreamed of conquest; there could be none, save the hardest and least grateful, the conquest of himself. Firm the Captain might be, but sad he must be. He could still serve the Countess (was not Paul de Roustache still dangerous?), but he could look for no reward. Small wonder that the meeting, whose risks and difficulty had made it seem before only the sweeter, now lost all its delight, and became the hardest of ordeals, the most severe and grim of duties.
If this was the Captain's mood, that of the lady whom he was to meet could be hardly more cheerful. If conscience seemed to trouble her less, and unhappy love not to occupy her mind as it governed his, the external difficulties of her position occasioned her greater distress and brought her near despair. Paul de Roustache's letter had been handed to her by her servant, with a smile half reproachful, half mocking, she had seized it, torn it open, and read it. She understood its meaning; she saw that the dreaded crisis had indeed come; and she was powerless to deal with it, or to avert the catastrophe it threatened. She sat before it now, very near to doing just what Count Andrea hated to think of and Captain Dieppe could not endure to see; and as she read and re-read the hateful thing she moaned softly to herself:
"Oh, how could I be so silly! How could I put myself in such a position? How could I consent to anything of the sort? I don't know what 'll happen. I have n't got fifty thousand francs! Oh, Emilia, how could you do it? I don't know what to do! And I 'm all alone—alone to face this fearful trouble!" Indeed the Count, led no doubt by the penetrating sympathy of love, seemed to have divined her feelings with a wonderful accuracy.