“I love Bertrand, father,” she said simply, “and he loves me.”
“My child——”
“He loves me,” Nicolette reiterated with firm conviction. “A woman is never mistaken over that, you know.”
“A woman perhaps, my dear,” the father retorted gently, and passed a hand that shook a little over her hair: “but you are such a child, my little Nicolette. You have never been away from our mountains and our skies, where God’s world is pure and simple. What do you know of evil?”
“There is no evil in Bertrand’s love for me,” she protested.
“Bah! there is evil in all the de Ventadours. They are all tainted with the mania for show and for wealth. And now that they are bankrupt in pocket as well as in honour, they hope to regild their stained escutcheon with your money——”
“That is false!” Nicolette broke in vehemently, “no one at the château knows that Bertrand and I love one another. A few hours ago he did not know that I cared for him.”
“A few hours ago he knew that his father’s fate was at his door. He is up to his eyes in debt; nothing can save even the roof over his head; his mother, his sister and that old harpy his grandmother have nothing ahead of them but beggary. Then suddenly you come to him with sweet words prompted by your dear kind heart, and that man, tottering on the brink of an awful precipice, sees a prop that will save him from stumbling headlong down. The Deydier money, he says to himself, why not indeed? True I shall have to stoop and marry the daughter of a vulgar peasant, but I can’t have the money without the wife, and so I’ll take her, and when I have got her, I can return to my fine friends in Paris, to the Court of Versailles and all the gaieties, and she poor fool can stay at home and nurse my mother or attend to the whims of old Madame; and if she frets and repines and eats out her heart with loneliness down at my old owl’s nest in Provence, well then I shall be rid of her all the sooner....”
“Father!” Nicolette cried with sudden passionate intensity which she made no attempt to check. “What wrong has Bertrand done to you that you should be willing to sacrifice my happiness to your revenge?”
A harsh laugh came from Jaume Deydier’s choking throat.