“How kind you were, the last time we were here together,” said Jacques; “how kind and generous you were then; you are very different now.”
“And you are very different, too, M. Chapeau; much more different than I am; it’s all your own fault; you choose to give yourself airs, and I won’t put up with it, and I believe we may as well part.”
“Give myself airs! No; but it’s you give yourself airs, and say things which cut me to the heart—things which I can’t bear; and, therefore, perhaps, we may as well part;” and Jacques assumed a most melancholy aspect, as he added, “So, good bye, Annot; there’s my hand. I wouldn’t, at any rate, part anything but friends after all.”
“Good bye,” said poor Annot, putting out her hand to her lover, and sobbing violently. “Good bye; I’m sure I never thought it would come to this. I’m sure I gave up everybody and everything for your sake.”
“Well; and didn’t I give up everybody, too. Haven’t I come all the way over here week after week, when people wondered what made me leave Durbellière so much; and wasn’t it all for love of you? Oh, Annot! Annot!” and even the manly dignity of M. Chapeau succumbed to tears.
“It’s no good talking,” said she, greatly softened; “for you can’t have loved me, and treated me as you did this day, letting me walk all alone from St. Laud, without so much as a word or a look; and that before all the people: and I that went merely to walk back with you. Oh! I could have died on the roadside to find myself treated in such a way.”
“And what must I have felt to hear you talking as you did before them all? Do you think I felt nothing?”
“Talking, Jacques; what talk?”
“Why; saying that you loved Cathelineau better than any one. That he was the only man you admired; that you dreamed of him always, and I don’t know how much more about his eyes and whiskers.”
“Why now, Jacques; you don’t mean to be jealous?”