“Do you expect to find, my darling, that ten days of captivity can have changed me?” he asked. “I have everything I want—everything I can pay for, that is—except liberty for correspondence . . . and my personal liberty, bien entendu.”
Indeed he looked younger, less worn, than at her last sight of him. And his tone, assumed or natural, was so calm. But somehow that very fact made her a little uneasy.
He took her hands again. “Sit down, my heart. No, not on my solitary chair; I cannot recommend it. The bed is better; I can sit there too.”
She obeyed him. She did not like to think he slept on that!
“This place makes me shudder, Gaston.”
“Dearest, after La Force and your other prison! It seems to me, now that you are here, like a palace! And you, what roof in Paris has the happiness of sheltering you?”
She told him. And then, holding his hand as he sat by her on the little bed, and turning round and round on his finger, for which it was now too loose, his emerald ring, she approached the subject so near her lips.
“Gaston, you spoke just now—not seriously, I know—of paying for your liberty. Suppose this plan for your rescue fails, which God forbid, but suppose it fails . . . could your liberty be bought?”
He looked at her so hard, so questioningly, that her hopes for the scheme sank lower still.
“I fear not,” he said very gravely. And then, after another pause, “What did you imagine could buy it, my wife?”