“Her lover! You do not mean the miserable Englishman who—”
“No Englishman,” interrupted Louvier, fiercely. “Enough that the step she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself. I have never even sought to hear of her since that day. Vicomte, that woman was the one love of my life. I loved her, as you must have known, to folly, to madness. And how was my love requited? Ah! you open a very deep wound, Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen and so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters belonging to a past life so remote from the present. For whom did Louise forsake you?”
“It matters not; he is dead.”
“I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you.”
“I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass.”
“Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer? So proud as she was, I can scarcely believe it.”
“Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled; her pride would not have allowed that.”
“He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue to live with him?”
“That question, at least, I can answer; for though I lost all trace of her life, his life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very few months after she fled he was enchained to another. Let us talk of her no more.”