"I will tell her," said the other maid of honor. "You stay with your friend, Agnes; for I have got that rose in my embroidery to finish. Farewell, Monsieur De Brecy. If I were a king, I would hang all the torturers and burn all the racks, with the man who first invented them in the middle of them." And she tripped gayly out of the room.
The boy took his departure at the same time; and Jean Charost and Agnes were left alone together, or nearly so--for various people came and went--during well-nigh an hour. The light soon began to fade, and a considerable portion of their interview passed in twilight; but their conversation was not such as to require any help from the looks. It was very calm and quiet. Vain were it, indeed, to say that they did not take much interest in each other. But both were very young, and there are different ways of being young. Some are young in years--some in mind--some in heart. Agnes and Jean Charost were both older than their years in mind, but perhaps younger than their years in heart; and nothing even like a dream of love came over the thoughts of either.
They talked much of the late Duke of Orleans, and Jean Charost told her a good deal of the duchess. They talked, too, of Madame De Giac; and Agnes related to him all the particulars of that lady's visit to her in the morning.
"Why she came, I really do not know," said the young girl. "Although she is a distant cousin of my late father's, there was never any great love between us, and we parted with no great tenderness two days after I saw you at Pithiviers. Her principal object seemed to be to tell me of your having visited her yesterday night, and to mention the foolish trick she played upon you. That she seemed very eager to explain--I know not why."
Jean Charost mused somewhat gloomily. There were suspicions in his breast he did not like to mention; and the conduct and demeanor of Madame De Giac toward himself were not what he could tell to her beside him.
"I love not that Madame De Giac," he said, at length.
"I never loved her," answered Agnes. "I can remember her before her marriage, and I loved her not then; but still less do I esteem her now, after having been more than ten days in her company. It is strange, Monsieur De Brecy, is it not, what it can be that gives children a sort of feeling of people's characters, even before they have any real knowledge of them. She was always very kind to me, even as a child; but I thought of her then just as I think of her now, though perhaps I ought to think worse; for since then she has said many things to me which I wish I had never heard."
"How so!" asked Jean Charost, eagerly. "What has she said?"
"Oh, much that I can not tell--that I forget," answered Agnes, with the color mounting in her cheek. "But her general conversation, with me at least, does not please me. She speaks of right and wrong, honesty and dishonesty, as if there were no distinctions between them but those made by priests and lawyers. Every thing, to her mind, depends upon what is most advantageous in the end; and that is the most advantageous, in her mind, which gives the most pleasure."
"She may be right," answered Jean Charost, "if she takes the next world into account as well as this. But still I think her doctrines dangerous ones, and would not have any one to whom I wish well listen to them."