“She is pricked,” thought the duke. “We may leave the poison to work.”
But the poison was not as he surmised: it was shame, not for the slandered but the slanderer, that burnt in her veins. Her father! That he could have debased himself to such methods! All in a moment he seemed revealed to her for what he was, a prince with a clown’s heart, a whited sepulchre, behind the mask of elegance a soul like a shrivelled kernel, without life or savour. She turned from him, in a very sickness of repulsion.
But that night, as Fanchette was preparing her for bed, she rose suddenly from her chair, and, turning upon the maid, clasped her convulsively by the arms.
“Tell me of him, or I shall die,” she said.
The girl for the moment was completely taken aback. She did not know what to answer, and could only stare and gasp. The feverish clutch closed more urgently upon her.
“I have no friend but you in all the world, Fanchette. Have I not been kind to you? O, be kind to me and tell me! You know very well—you have always known, I think. Forgive me if I pretended not to understand you. I tried so long to fight against it; and I could not—and my heart is breaking.”
Startled, unnerved as she was, Fanchette could not but be touched by that piteous appeal.
“Hush!” she said. “What do you want to know? There, sit upon this couch, and speak low, while I kneel to you. So. Now, tell me, are you always thinking of him?”
“Always, always, Fanchette—all the weary day and night. Why does he not send me one least little message?”
“It is said he is gone to Vienna.”