"Certainly, mademoiselle, and I—"
"In the first place, I have a horror of poor people,—they are so loathsome in their rags they fairly turn one's stomach."
"They are horrible creatures, it is true, but one has to throw them a little money now and then as one throws a bone to a starving dog to keep him from biting you. It is merely a matter of policy."
"I understand, then, for I wondered how you could feel any interest in such repulsive creatures."
"Good Heavens, mademoiselle," replied Macreuse, more and more earnestly, "you must not wonder at certain apparent contradictions between the present and the past. If any do exist you are the cause of them, so ought you not to pardon them? What did I tell you from the very first? Did I not confess that you had wrought a complete change in my life? Ah, yes, I had sorrows, but I have them no longer. I was devout, but henceforth there is only one divinity for me, yourself. As for my virtues," added M. de Macreuse, with a cynical smile, "they need not worry you. Only too happy to lay the others at your feet, I will retain only such as may please you."
"How infamous!" thought Ernestine. "To attract my attention, or, rather, to excite my interest, this man made a pretence of being charitable, virtuous, devout, and a most devoted son; now he denies his virtues, his charity, his mother, and even his God, to please me, and attain his object, viz., to marry me for my money, while the detestable faults I affect do not shock him in the least; he even praises and exalts them."
Mlle. de Beaumesnil, who was little versed in dissimulation, and who had been obliged to exercise the greatest self-restraint in order to enact the rôle which would assist her in unmasking M. de Macreuse, could no longer conceal her scorn and disgust, and, in spite of all her efforts, her face betrayed her real feelings only too plainly, as she listened to M. de Macreuse's last words.
That gentleman, like all the disciples of his school, made a constant study of the countenance of the person he wished to deceive or convince; and the quick contraction of Mlle. de Beaumesnil's features, her smile of bitter disdain, and a sort of impatient indignation that she made little or no attempt to conceal at the moment, were a sudden and startling revelation to M. de Macreuse.
"I am caught," he said to himself. "It was a trap. She distrusted me and wanted to try me. She pretended to be silly, capricious, vain, heartless, and irreligious, merely to see if I would have the courage to censure her, and if my love would survive such a discovery. Who the devil would have suspected such cunning in a girl of sixteen? But if she has feigned all these objectionable proclivities, her real instincts must be good and generous," this beloved disciple of Abbé Ledoux said to himself. "And if she was anxious to put me to the test she must have had some idea of marrying me. All is not lost. I must recover my lost ground by a bold stroke."
These reflections on the part of the pious youth lasted only for an instant, but that instant sufficed to prepare him for another transformation.