You could not say that M. Fortunat was angry. Such a man, as cold and as smooth as a hundred franc piece, has no useless passions. But he was intensely irritated to hear his client foolishly chanting the paeons of victory, while he was compelled to conceal his grief at the loss of his forty thousand francs, deep in the recesses of his heart. So, far from being touched by the marquis’s evident alarm, it pleased him to be able to turn the dagger in the wound he had just inflicted. “You must excuse my incredulity,” said he. “It comes entirely from something you, yourself, told me about a week ago.”
“What did I tell you?”
“That you suspected Mademoiselle Marguerite of a—how shall I express it?—of a secret preference for some other person.”
The gloomiest despondency had now followed the marquis’s enthusiasm and exultation. He was evidently in torture. “I more than suspected it,” said he.
“Ah!”
“I was certain of it, thanks to the count’s house-keeper, Madame Leon, a miserable old woman whom I have hired to look after my interests. She has been watching Mademoiselle Marguerite, and saw a letter written by her——”
“Oh!”
“Certainly nothing has passed that Mademoiselle Marguerite has any cause to blush for. The letter, which is now in my possession, contains unmistakable proofs of that. She might proudly avow the love she has inspired, and which she undoubtedly returns. Yet——”
M. Fortunat’s gaze was so intent that it became unbearable. “You see, then,” he began, “that I had good cause to fear.”
Exasperated beyond endurance, M. de Valorsay sprang up so violently that he overturned his chair. “No!” he exclaimed, “no, a thousand times no! You are wrong—for the man who loves Mademoiselle Marguerite is now ruined. Yes, such is really the case. While we are sitting here, at this very moment, he is lost—irredeemably lost. Between him and the woman whom I wish to marry—whom I SHALL marry—I have dug so broad and deep an abyss that the strongest love cannot overleap it. It is better and worse than if I had killed him. Dead, he would have been mourned, perhaps; while now, the lowest and most degraded woman would turn from him in disgust, or, even if she loved him, she would not dare to confess it.”