“And he took this apartment for you, and gave you money to buy that smart dress and these furs. Bah! mon enfant, why try to deceive me? Do I not know my Paris? A fort bel homme does not make himself guardian to a fort belle fine so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like himself.”
Julie’s eyes flashed. “Ah, Gustave! ah, Monsieur!” she said, half angrily, half plaintively, “I see that my guardian knew you better than I did. Never mind; I will not reproach. Thou halt the right to despise me.”
“Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee,” said Gustave, somewhat disconcerted. “But own that thy story is strange; and this guardian, who knows me better than thou—does he know me at all? Didst thou speak to him of me?”
“How could I help it? He says that this terrible war, in which he takes an active part, makes his life uncertain from day to day. He wished to complete the trust bequeathed to him by seeing me safe in the love of some worthy man who”—she paused for a moment with an expression of compressed anguish, and then hurried on—“who would recognise what was good in me,—would never reproach me for—for—the past. I then said that my heart was thine: I could never marry any one but thee.”
“Marry me,” faltered Gustave—“marry!”
“And,” continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, “he said thou wert not the husband he would choose for me: that thou wert not—no, I cannot wound thee by repeating what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade me think of thee no more. I said again, that is impossible.”
“But,” resumed Rameau, with an affected laugh, “why think of anything so formidable as marriage? Thou lovest me, and—” He approached again, seeking to embrace her. She recoiled. “No, Gustave, no. I have sworn solemnly by the memory of my lost mother—O—that I will never sin again. I will never be to thee other than thy friend—or thy wife.”
Before Gustave could reply to these words, which took him wholly by surprise, there was a ring at the outer door, and the old bonne ushered in Victor de Mauleon. He halted at the threshold, and his brow contracted.
“So you have already broken faith with me, Mademoiselle?”
“No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith,” cried Julie; passionately. “I told you that I would not seek to find out Monsieur Rameau. I did not seek, but I met him unexpectedly. I owed to him an explanation. I invited him here to give that explanation. Without it, what would he have thought of me? Now he may go, and I will never admit him again without your sanction.”