How long was her “retreat” to last? for how long would it be countenanced by those most concerned in terminating it? No convention of seemly mourning could apply to such a widow—widowed of a love before a husband. Le Prieuré did not expect that hypocrisy of her. But it wanted its Marchesa.
During all these days her father politicly kept aloof, awaiting the first signal of her surrender to him. He had learnt his lesson, and recognised how any approaches from him would but aggravate the malady of her despair. Target kept him, at very little cost, informed of madama’s state; and in the meanwhile he made a judicious ostentation of his poverty, implying, “See me here, the natural trustee of thousands, condemned, by a child’s undutifulness, to go in mended boots!” His patience under suffering made an impression.
But presently, quicker than his soles, it wore out. He would not climb the hill himself, but he commissioned a deputy, in the person of Dr Paccard, shrewd and kindly, to put a case for him. The old man gained access to the patient by a ruse (M. Saint-Péray’s landlord begged a word with her, was the message he sent in), and found her lying like a sweet thing thrown up by the sea, white and just breathing. She saw directly that the mad hope on which her heart had leaped was but another shadow of the shadows which were haunting her. Her eyes absorbed his soul.
He uttered some commonplaces of his craft. She stopped him.
“Why did you send in that message?”
He blushed and stammered: then rushed, characteristically, for the truth.
“I feared you would refuse to see me else. I lodged M. Saint-Péray, it is true, and loved and respected him. We are homely people, I and my daughter Martha. It was that simple quality which most endeared us to him. What he chiefly valued in my girl was the domestic probity which attached her, first of all sentiments, to the sentiment of filial duty.”
“Old man, I will not go home to my father.”
“O, madama! let me speak. One, even a Marchesa—”
“I am not a Marchesa—”