“Understand what?”
“That, knowing who you were, I should not so have betrayed myself, if it had been true.”
“It is not true, then?”
“It is true I do pity him—and her.”
“Pity excites a fonder feeling. You have said it.”
She hesitated, saw no way out of the impasse, and took refuge in the long-threatened collapse. He succumbed at once.
“O, hush, girl, for heaven’s sake! All the world will hear you.”
“O—O! I don’t care. To be so doubted and put upon; to have served this man as I have; stifled my better feelings for his sake; sought to ruin a mistress, who has never shown me anything but kindness; as good as offered to be the chevalier’s abettor and their go-between—and then to be treated as if I were a perfide and a wanton! I will never give my heart to anyone again; I will beg admission into a convent and end my days a spouse of heaven! O—O!”
He was terrified. He knelt down by the struggling figure, and crushed it within his arms, seeking to suffocate its outcries.
“Fanchette—you are betraying us—for God’s sake compose yourself! There, there, girl—I did not mean it. I believe you, on my soul, to be true to me. We must make our compact binding—indissoluble—never to be questioned from this time by either of us. Come with me—through the sacristy. Gaspare is always my friend—he will be my friend again—and the priest is safe elsewhere. Any moment may bring discovery upon us. Come, lovely and adorable—let us kiss and forgive. Fanchette!”