He made no reply.
Then she, who had just now been all humility, raised herself to her full height, and in a tone of bitterest sarcasm said slowly,—
“In other words, you want me to sacrifice myself, and at the same time all my family. For your sake? Yes, but even more for Miss Chandore’s sake. And you think that it is quite a simple thing. I am the past to you, satiety, disgust: she is the future to you, desire, happiness. And you think it quite natural that the old love should make a footstool of her love and her honor for the new love? You think little of my being disgraced, provided she be honored; of my weeping bitterly, if she but smile? Well, no, no! it is madness in you to come and ask me to save you, so that you may throw yourself into the arms of another. It is madness, when in order to tear you from Dionysia, I am ready to ruin myself, provided only that you be lost to her forever.”
“Wretch!” cried Jacques.
She looked at him with a mocking air, and her eyes beamed with infernal audacity.
“You do not know me yet,” she cried. “Go, speak, denounce me! M. Folgat no doubt has told you how I can deny and defend myself.”
Maddened by indignation, and excited to a point where reason loses its power over us, Jacques de Boiscoran moved with uplifted hand towards the countess, when suddenly a voice said,—
“Do not strike that woman!”
Jacques and the countess turned round, and uttered, both at the same instant, the same kind of sharp, terrible cry, which must have been heard a great distance.
In the frame of the door stood Count Claudieuse, a revolver in his hand, and ready to fire.