La Vireville nodded. "He gave me this memento, as I told you the other day." He poured out some cider, and added, "As for me, I was fool enough to fire in the air."
"You loved—her—as much as that!" cried the Marquis before he could stop himself.
The little remaining colour ebbed slowly from La Vireville's face, and, like a palimpsest, all the suffering written below its sardonic gaiety was abruptly visible. He did not answer, and René, ashamed to have unveiled it, put his own hand over his eyes as if to shade them from the candle. "He loves her still," he said to himself.
La Vireville suddenly laughed, and the sound made his companion jump.
"I might as well have shot him after all," he said, with cold levity.
"Why?"
"She left him after a year for another man. Dramatic justice, was it not?—and a lesson to me always to follow my first impulses! But I have bored you with my affairs long enough. As I have no wine, will you drink a glass of cider? There is little variety of vintage on this damned peninsula."
But René de Flavigny refused and, rising, flung his cloak about him. La Vireville surely was better alone. He longed to ask if the woman were still alive, but dared not.
La Vireville's face, however, was an enigma once more. He took the Marquis's outstretched hand across the table.
"You, at least, cannot betray me in that way. I am not affianced now!" he said; and with that bitter jest, which René pardoned for the pain still alive in the speaker's eyes, they parted.