He had noted the ring of scorn in her voice, the return of that haughty and obstinate self-will, which would for ever stand between her and happiness. His expression suddenly hardened, as he looked at her flashing eyes and the contemptuous curl of the exquisite lips, all the gentleness went out of his face, the latent tenderness which she had wilfully ignored, and his voice, no longer softly mocking, became hard and bitter in its tones.
"I?" he said with a slight uplifting of his brow and a self-deprecating droop of the lip, "surely, Madame, you are pleased to jest. I am no statesman, no politician, I scarce have a sufficiency of brains to be a figure head in an administration. I have never been taught to think."
"You are mocking me, milor," she said haughtily.
"Nothing is further from my thoughts. I have far too much respect for your ladyship to venture on either mockery or individual thought."
She paused awhile, frowning and impatient, angered beyond bounds, too, at his attitude, which she was quite clever enough to see did not represent the true state of his mind. No doubt he desired to punish her for her contempt of him that morning. She would have liked to read the expression in his face, to know something of what was going on behind that straight, handsome brow, and the eyes always so gentle, yet so irritating now in this semblance of humility. She thought certainly that the outline of the jaw suggested obstinacy—the obstinacy of the inherently weak. If she had not wanted his help so much, she would have left him then and there, in scorn and in wrath, only too glad that sentiment had not led her into more excuses or explanations—a prayer for forgiveness mayhap. She was not a little irritated with herself too, for she felt that she had made a wrong start: she was quite sure that his supineness, at any rate with regard to the fate of the Stuart prince, was assumed. There must be a way of appealing to that loyalty which she knew he cherished for his friend, some means of breaking down that barrier of resentment which he had evidently set up against her.
Oh! if it had been a few months ago, when he still loved her, before Irène de Stainville. . . She paused in this train of thought, her mind not daring to travel further along it; it was such a wide, such a glorious possibility that that one little "if" suggested, that her heart quivered with renewed agony, and the weak tears, of which she was so ashamed, insisted on coming to her eyes.
If only his love for her was not dead, how easy her task would have been! It would have fired him to enthusiasm now, caused him to forget his resentment against her in this great work yet to be accomplished, and instead of asking him for passive help she could have incited him to a deed of loyalty and of courage. But now she was too proud to continue her appeal: she thought that she had done her best, and had not even succeeded in breaking through the icy reserve and resentment which in his heart had taken the place of silent and humble worship.
"Milor," she said with sudden determination, and in the authoritative manner which was more habitual to her than the more emotional, passionately appealing mood, "with your leave we'll cease these unworthy bickerings. I may have been hasty in my actions this morning. If so I pray you not to vent your anger against your friend. If I have wronged you by taking you at your word, when a year ago you told me that you would never wish to interfere in my official work, well! I humbly beg you pardon, and again entreat you not to allow your friend to expiate the sins of your wife. You say that the men of France are what the women have made them; there I think that you are wrong—at least in this: that in your mind the word woman stands for those of the sex who are pure and loyal as well as those for who are not. It is not the women of France who have made the men, milor, rather it is the men who—looking to the Pompadours, the Irène de Stainvilles, not only for companionship and for pleasure, but also, heaven help them! for ideals—have made the women what they are! But enough of this. You no doubt think me wordy and tedious, and neither understand, nor wish to understand that there may be honour and chivalry in a far greater degree in the heart of a woman, than in that of the more selfish sex. I have asked for your advice in all simplicity and loyalty, acknowledging the sin I have committed and asking you to help me in atoning for it, in a way useful to your friend. This appeal for advice you have met with sneers and bitter mockery: on my soul, milor if I could now act without your assistance I would do so, for in all the humiliation which I have had to endure to-day, none has been more galling or more hard to bear believe me, than that which I must now endure through finding myself, in a matter essentially vital to my heart and even to my reason, dependent upon your help."
He could hear her voice trembling a little in spite of her efforts at self-control. He knew quite well that at this moment she spoke the truth, and these last words of hers, which for many a long day afterward rang persistently in his ears, represented to him ever afterward the very acme of mental—aye! and physical—pain which one human being could inflict on another. At the time it absolutely seemed unendurable: it seemed to him that under the blow, thus coldly dealt by those same beautiful lips, for which his own ached with an intensity of passionate longing, either his life or his reason must give way. The latter probably, for life is more tenacious and more cruel in its tenacity: yet if reason went, then Heaven alone could help him, for he would either kill her or outrage her beyond the hope of pardon.
"Therefore, milor," she resumed after a slight pause, unconscious evidently of the intense cruelty of her words, "I will beg of you not to make it harder for me than need be. I must ask this help from you, in order to succeed, if humanly possible, in outwitting the infamous work of a gang of traitors. Will you, at least, give me this help I need?"