“Who is this thief that comes into my garden to steal my rose? A beast whom they liken to Gilles de Rais; a thing so foul that I would rather my rose were scentless than that he should boast to have shared in the tiniest largesse of her perfume.”
“Hush! he is the husband whom my father has chosen for me.”
At that Louis-Marie threw poetry to the winds, and seized Yolande’s hands, and looked with madness into her eyes.
“He may choose, but let me gather no submission from your tone. Yolande, we will go down together, and claim our older pledge and win his heart by tears. I had meant this very morning to urge you to that course. Why didn’t I before! O, why didn’t I before! I curse my own delay! I—”
“Louis!”
“Yes, I was wrong. ’Tis love’s, it seems, to damn. Come down, Yolande, before it is too late.”
“Listen, dear love; it is too late. It was a conditional promise, and the condition has been observed. What should my father know of you? His word is his bond, and he will hold to it.”
“He cannot know the reputation of this man. His breath’s a blight upon the earth. Why, even now—”
He broke off with a cry, and clasped his arms convulsively about her.
She was like a ghost, holding up her white hands to him piteously. Cartouche saw what perfect things they were, frail and slender, yet of a beauty to cradle all love. Her face, in its milky pallour, grey-eyed and scarlet-lipped, was like the face of some spirit tragedy flowering from the mists.