“Oh, Marmaduke, you thrill my heart with joy!”
“Alas, dear Sauterelle, that love and duty should thus clash! But, oh, I must not marry thee; I am so far beneath thee. Dear Sauterelle, thou wilt return to France and be the wife of some great prince, while I, alas! shall wear my life away in hopelessness and grief. And yet, oh Sauterelle, I love thee so! I love thee so! I fear I yet shall yield to love, forgetting duty.”
Then Charles stepped out of his lurking-place, and said respectfully:
“Forgive me, sir, that I should speak to you, but duty is not always what it seems. How can this helpless one return to France alone! A priest at hand, a marriage, sir, is duty in this case. Your father’s house is near—live there till Duke Chaloupe hears of this rescue and this marriage. Then Duke Chaloupe will send us funds for all to go to France.”
“Oh, would that I could think that you are right! I should no longer hesitate.”
Then, forgetting himself and his position, he fell back on prose. “Why should not Lady Sauterelle and the priest return? Are there no hoards of jewels and treasure here in this building, that would pay the passage, at least? Scélérat, perhaps, has millions buried here, which can be found.”
“No he hasn’t,” said Will, thrusting his head into the room. “Not a cent. What did you expect the captive to do after the rescue? What were your ideas on that point?”
“Alas,” groaned Marmaduke, “I had none! I never thought what any of us would do immediately after the rescue; my thoughts were far ahead in the future. Oh, if I had only sent that letter to the Government!”
At that moment a person with majestic mien strode into the room, saying, “I come, I come; who calls Père Tortenson? Is it a marriage, lovely Sauterelle? If so, quite right. Who is the honored bridegroom?”
As Marmaduke’s chivalric notions of right and wrong still admonished him not to enter into marriage with a person of noble birth, he had the uprightness to resist the feelings of his heart once more, though it cost him a hard struggle to do so.