Henri de Courcelles looked up in amazement as the order sounded on his ear. He knew of no friends to visit him in his trouble. He was sitting in a small whitewashed room, which contained a pallet, a table, and a couple of wooden chairs. His day’s rations were before him, but he had not touched them. He was still in his usual attire, for it had not been thought worth while to put him into prison clothes, and notwithstanding an unshorn face and unkempt hair, he was looking as handsome—perhaps handsomer, than ever, for disorder suited his gipsy style of beauty. As he caught sight of Maraquita’s shrouded and veiled figure, he started a little, but he never supposed for a moment it could be she, until she lifted her veil, and gazed at him with scared and mournful eyes.
‘Henri,’ she exclaimed, in a piteous voice, ‘I have come to see you!’
In her vanity, she had believed she had only to stand before him, and look miserable, to bring him to her feet again. She had forgotten the deadly insult she had put upon the man by marrying Sir Russell Johnstone; the lies with which she had attempted to deceive him to the very end; the treachery by which she and her mother had procured his dismissal from Beauregard. She trusted, like many another of her sex, too much to the power of her beauty to sway the minds of men. But mere loveliness cannot supply the place of truth and fidelity, and she had become nothing in the eyes of her former lover but a whited sepulchre, and was the last person upon earth he desired to see. He sprang to his feet as her voice fell on his ear, and looked at her with ineffable scorn.
‘You have come to see me, and why?’
‘Oh, Henri, how can you ask? Do you think I am made of stone, that I have entirely forgotten? When I saw you amongst those terrible mutineers last night, it nearly killed me.’
‘It’s a pity it didn’t quite kill you,’ he replied, ‘for women such as you are not fit to live! Do you know why I was there,—why I headed their numbers, and incited them on to rebellion and slaughter?—in order that I might kill you,—in order that you should not live to deceive other men, and drive them to desperation, as you have driven me.’
‘Oh, Henri, Henri,’ she exclaimed, panting with fear, ‘you are raving! You would not injure me! Think, Henri, think of the hours I have lain with my head on your breast and my lips to yours; think how you have loved me,—of the tie between us, and I am sure that you would die sooner than hurt a hair of my head.’
‘Think of it!’ he repeated, with a bitter laugh; ‘haven’t I thought of it until it has turned my brain, and made me lust for your blood? To think of all your professions of love, and how they have ended, is to hate and despise you. The tie between us! It had better die, and rot where it lies, than grow up with one tithe of its mother’s falsehood. No, Maraquita, the time for my belief in you is past. If you came here to hear compliments, you have wasted your time, for I have nothing but loathing and hatred to give you.’
‘Oh, Henri!’ she said, shivering, with her face hidden in her hands, ‘don’t speak to me like that! I will go away, and never attempt to cross your path again, only promise me that neither you nor your friends shall hurt me. It was not my fault, indeed it wasn’t. I married at the command of my parents, and I have been so miserable since, Henri. I have dreamt of you almost every night, and longed to see you again. Oh, don’t look at me like that! Kiss me, and say you forgive me, or I shall never know another happy moment.’
‘Kiss you! Forgive you!’ he repeated witheringly. ‘Never! Neither in this life, nor the life to come. You escaped me last night, Maraquita, but you shall not escape me for ever. I have sworn to have your life, in return for all that was precious to me in mine, and I will have it yet. I only bide my time.’