“As your mother’s was bound up in your father, what?” Deydier retorted hotly. “She too was a loving, trusting girl once: she too was rich; and when her fortune was sunk into the bottomless morass of family debts, your father went out of the world leaving her to starve or not according as her friends were generous or her creditors rapacious. Look at her now, M. le Comte, and tell me if any father could find it in his heart to see his child go the way of the Comtesse Marcelle?”
“You are hard, Monsieur Deydier.”
“You would find me harder still if you brought Nicolette to unhappiness.”
“I love her——”
“You never thought of her until your creditors were at your heels and you saw no other way before you to satisfy them, save a rich marriage.”
“It is false!”
“False is it?” Deydier riposted roughly, “How else do you hope to satisfy your creditors, M. le Comte de Ventadour? If you married Nicolette without a dowry how would you satisfy them? How would you live? how would you support your wife and your coming family?
“These may be sordid questions, ugly to face beside the fine sounding assertions and protestations of selfless love. But I am not an aristocrat. I am a peasant and speak as I think. And I ask you this one more question, M. le Comte: in exchange for all the love, the security, the wealth, which a marriage with my daughter would bring you, what have you to offer her? An ancient name? It is tarnished. A château? ’Tis in ruins. Position? ’Tis one of shame. Nay! M. le Comte go and offer these treasures elsewhere. My daughter is too good for you.”
“You are both cruel and hard, Monsieur Deydier,” Bertrand protested, with a cry of indignation that came straight from the heart. “On my honour the thought of Nicolette’s fortune never once entered my mind.”
To this Deydier made no reply. A look of determination, stronger even than before, made his face look hard and almost repellent. He pressed his lips tightly together, his eyes narrowed till they appeared like mere slits beneath his bushy brows; he buried his hands in the pockets of his breeches and paced up and down the room, seeming with each step to strengthen his resolve. Then he came to a sudden halt in front of Bertrand, the hardness partly vanished from his face, and he placed a hand, the touch of which was not altogether unkind, on the young man’s shoulder.