I tried to relieve the situation by saying how happy not only Mignon but any one of us would be with so brilliant an advocate as madame pleading for our happiness, but she waved me aside with:
“No—please don’t. I want dear Lemois to answer. It was one of my reasons for coming to-night, and he must tell me. He is so kind and considerate, and he is always so sorry for anything that suffers. He loves flowers and birds and animals, and music and pictures and all beautiful things, and yet he is worse than one of the cannibals that Monsieur Herbert tells us about. They eat their young girls and have done with them—Lemois kills his by slow torture—and so I ask you again, dear Lemois—why?”
Everybody sat up straight. How would Lemois take it? His fingers began to work, and the corners of his mouth straightened. A sudden flush crossed his habitually pale face. We were sure now of an outbreak: what would happen then none of us dared think.
“Madame la marquise,” he began slowly—too slowly for anything but ill-suppressed feeling—“there is no one that I know for whom I have a higher respect; you must yourself have seen that in the many years I have known you. You are a very good and a very noble woman; all your life people have loved you—they still love you. It is one of your many gifts—one you should be thankful for. Some of us do not win this affection. You are, if you will permit me to say it, never lonely nor alone, except by your own choosing. Some of us cannot claim that—I for one. Do you not now understand?” He was still boiling inside, but the patience of the trained landlord and the innate breeding of the man had triumphed. And then, again, it would be a rash Frenchman of his class who would defy a woman of her exalted rank.
Over her face crept a pleased look—as if she held some trump card up her sleeve—and one of her cooing, bubbling laughs escaped her lips.
“You are not telling me the truth, you dear Lemois. I am not in love with Gaston, the fisherman, nor are you with our pretty Mignon. Neither you nor I have anything to do with it. Here are two young people whose happiness is trembling in the balance. You hold the scales—that is, you claim to, although the girl is neither your child nor your ward and could marry without your consent, and would if she did not love you for yourself and for all you have done for her. Answer me now—do you object because Gaston is a fisherman?”
Whether her knowledge of Lemois’ legal rights—and she had stated them correctly—softened him, or whether he saw a loophole for himself, was not apparent, but the answer came with a certain surrender.
“Yes. It is a dangerous life. You have only to live here, as I have done, to count the women who bid their men good-by and watch in the gray dawn for the boat that never comes back—Mignon’s elder brothers in one of them. I do not want her to go through that agony—she is young yet—some one else will come. The first love is not always the last—except in the case of madame”—and he smiled in strange fashion. The bomb was still within reach of his hand, but the fuse had gone out.
“Then it isn’t Gaston himself?” she demanded with unflinching gaze.
“No—he is an honest lad; good to his mother; industrious—a brave fellow. He has, too, so I hear, a place in the market—one of the stalls—so he is getting on, and will soon be one of our best citizens.” He would talk all night about Gaston, and pleasantly, if she wished.