“And you met him?” There was soft eagerness, a restrained rapture, but no least suspicion in the fervid tone. Fanchette shrugged her shoulders perceptibly.
“What would you! One in the last extremity must take a bull by the horns. It is safer, at least, than to run away from him. Yes, I met him, mademoiselle.” She hardened herself to the passionate entreaty of the eyes, of the lips that mutely questioned her. “He had in truth,” she said, “been to the wars; and now, taking advantage of a truce, had come back like a roaring devil to renew his assault upon me.”
“To renew—what?”
“O, mademoiselle! I would have spared you; but you know you never would believe. Be assured, nevertheless, that I was not to be so harried from my honesty. I entreated him to release me for once and for all from his importunities; to abstain further from compromising me with one to whom my heart was given. Ah—bah! I might as well have appealed to a blood-thirsty tiger. And now I shall know what persecution to expect in this quiet place.”
Even as she ended, her voice faltered, as if in some instinctive misgiving, and she hung her head.
And Isabella? Incredulity, amazement, indignation—in turn each emotion flashed its light across the beautiful face, and quivered and passed—to be succeeded by scorn: scorn so sovereign, so consuming, that calumny, shrivelling in its overriding flame, died in an instant on those lying lips.
“Fanchette.”
“Yes, madame?”
“Fanchette, look at me.”
The girl obeyed, caught her breath with a start, and lowered her lids.