"Well," she said, "I have seen and heard enough of you to make no further effort to thwart or even to influence you. Yet I have a proposition to make. First of all, consider these things. If we come to no arrangement with each other I shall use every means I can to prevent your obtaining an interview with my father. Everything is in my favour. He is very old, he has a hatred of strangers, he grants audiences to no one. He never passes outside the grounds of the villa, and all the gates are guarded by sentries, who admit no one save those who have the entrée. Then, if you attempt to approach him by correspondence, his private secretary, who opens every letter, is one of my own appointing. I have exaggerated none of these things. It will be difficult for you to approach the King. You may succeed—you seem to have the knack of success—but it will take time. Isobel's re-appearance will be without dignity, and open to many remarks for various reasons. You may even fail to convince my father, and if you failed the first time there would be no second opportunity."
"What you say, Madame," I admitted, "is reasonable. I have never assumed that as yet my task is completed. I recognize fully the difficulties that are still before me."
"You have common-sense, Mr. Greatson, I am glad to see," she continued. "I am the more inclined to hope that you will accede to my proposition. Briefly, it is this! Let me have the credit of bringing Isobel to her grandfather. Her year in London would at all times, in these days of scandal, be a somewhat delicate matter to publish. What you have done, you have done, as I very well know, from no hope of or desire for reward. Efface yourself. It will be for Isobel's good. I myself shall stand sponsor for her to the world. I shall have discovered her in the convent here, and I shall take her back to her rightful place with triumph. All your difficulties then will vanish, your end will have been creditably and adequately attained. For myself the advantage is obvious. A difference to Adelaide it must make, but it will inevitably be less if the credit of her discovery remains with me. Have I made myself clear, Mr. Greatson?"
"Perfectly," I answered. "But you forget there is Isobel herself to be considered. She is no longer a child. She has opinions and a will of her own."
"She owes too much to you," Madame replied quietly, "to disregard your wishes."
I believed from the first that the woman was in earnest, and her proposal an honest one. And yet I hesitated. The past was a little recent. She showed that she read my thoughts.
"Come," she said, "I will prove to you that I mean what I say. To-night I will give a dinner-party—informal, it is true, but the Prince of Cleves, my cousin the Cardinal, and your own ambassador, shall come. I will introduce Isobel as my niece. The affair will then be established. Do you consent?"
For one moment I hesitated. I knew very well what my answer meant. Absolute effacement, the tearing out of my life for ever of what had become the sweetest part of it. In that single moment it seemed to me that I realized with something like complete despair the barrenness of the days to come.
"Madame, if Isobel is to be persuaded," I answered, "I consent."