"His wife, I say, would have displayed more faith in him than you—you, so immaculate and so base-minded! And all these years you have pretended to love him! Why, body and soul, the cheapest girl of the Palais-Royal has a better notion of love than you! Yet you are my granddaughter . . . at least I suppose so! But I shall hope, during the rest of my life, to forget it."
"Oh, I think you have already succeeded!" cried Avoye, almost beside herself. "You who bore my father, to say such things to me! If Aymar were here——" She stopped, suddenly choking.
Her grandmother leant back in her chair with an air of complete victory, and a smile that matched it. "Yes?" she enquired, "if Aymar were here—now—what, then?"
Avoye stared at the pitiless old face and saw completely, nakedly, what her own lack of pity towards her lover had done for herself. The shield between her and that hostility was gone for ever; and till this hour she had not realized how efficaciously it had been her shield. Indeed, there was nothing for her now but the roof of another.
"I shall start for Paris at once," she said, clutching to her the last poor remnants of her composure. "You need not fear, this time, that I shall ever return."
"No, I imagine that I am scarcely in danger of being forced a second time to receive you back," agreed her grandmother, and the smile grew sharper. "—Will you kindly ring the bell for Rose as you go out?"
CHAPTER IX - THE TOLEDO BLADE
"But in my terms of honour
I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement,
Till by some elder masters of known honour