“This evening,” she had said, “I shall certainly know your heart.”
What could this mean? Could she doubt him?
Tortured by the most cruel anxieties, the poor youth could not resolve to go away without an explanation, and he hung around the chateau hoping that Marie-Anne would reappear.
She did reappear at last, but leaning upon the arm of her father.
Young d’Escorval followed them at a distance, and soon saw them enter the parsonage. What were they going to do there? He knew that the duke and his son were within.
The time that they remained there, and which he passed in the public square, seemed more than a century long.
They emerged at last, however, and he was about to join them when he was prevented by the appearance of Martial, whose promises he overheard.
Maurice knew nothing of life; he was as innocent as a child, but he could not mistake the intentions that dictated this step on the part of the Marquis de Sairmeuse.
At the thought that a libertine’s caprice should dare rest for an instant upon the pure and beautiful girl whom he loved with all the strength of his being—whom he had sworn should be his wife—all his blood mounted madly to his brain.
He felt a wild longing to chastise the insolent wretch.