“A woman, child? To be sure; and I had thought it enough to appeal to the woman in you; the daughter first of all. How we had laboured for this alliance, prayed for it, rejoiced at last in its reality—ah, mon Dieu, you cannot know! And yet you should know. It has been the hope of our maturity; our comfort and solace in our days of bitter trial. It was to set us right with the world, to relieve us of our embarrassments, to enable us to do justice at last to the many poor souls long devoted to our fortunes. And with you it rested to be the almoner to all these pathetic needs.”
“Father—no! You kill me with your words!”
“Kill you? Ah, child, what if it kill your mother, in the frail state she is in, to learn of this final blow to her hopes?”
She had thrown her arms, as she knelt, across a chair, and now laid her face on them, abandoned to hopeless grief.
“Am I to speak her death-sentence then?” asked the duke, in a broken whisper.
Her face still hidden, she held out her poor left hand. Understanding, he slipped the ring upon the quivering finger, and, wise in the resolve to let well alone, went softly from the room, and left her to her despair.
In the corridor outside he came upon M. la Coque, who scanned his agitated face with a furtive curiosity. The duke motioned his favourite to follow him, and led the way into his private closet, where he threw himself into a chair, and began to fan his brow exhaustedly with his handkerchief.
“Charlot,” he said presently, looking up from under languid lids: “is the door shut?”
“It is fast, monseigneur.”
The duke signed to him to come nearer.