"Oh, no, no, no!" exclaimed Eugenie, wringing her hands. "What, what shall I do?"
"Merely listen to me, Eugenie, my beloved!" cried D'Aubin. "With the power to compel, a thousand times rather would I succeed by entreaty; and instead of seeking to command you, let me at your feet seek to persuade you. Hear me plead my cause, Eugenie, in language that you have never heard me use before, because I was ignorant of the motives which actuated you, and attributed your conduct towards me to mere caprice, whereas I now know it to have been just, excellent, and wise, and like yourself. The same ignorance has made me harsh to you, and unjust towards my cousin St. Real; and I will not rise from my knee till you have heard my exculpation, and fully know how much we have all been deceived."
"Indeed!" said Eugenie, "indeed! yet I am at a loss to guess what you can mean."
"Well may you be so, Eugenie!" replied D'Aubin; "well may you be so! For it was only yesterday that I learned the elucidation of the mystery myself. You have been cheated, Eugenie; you have been deceived; you have been taught to believe a man who loved you, and you alone, a heartless profligate. But first hear me, Eugenie, when I declare that I have never loved any one but you; that from the first moment your hand was promised me by your father, the idea of your young charms has ever been present to my mind, and the hope of soon possessing them been the consolation of my whole existence."
Eugenie coloured deeply: "I am grieved, sir," she replied; but D'Aubin interrupted, saying,--
"Hear me, Eugenie, to the end: I have but given you a picture of my own feelings towards you. Now let me display all the base and crooked means that have been taken to alienate your affection from me, and then tell me if it be right and just to let those means still have effect, when you are convinced of their falsehood and iniquity. Only yesterday did I discover that at Paris you had become acquainted with one of the late Queen Catherine's train of ladies--a train which, I need not tell you, was and will remain marked with infamy to the eyes of all posterity!"
"Perhaps so!" cried Eugenie eagerly; "but the name of Beatrice of Ferrara will always be excepted. The daughter of a sovereign prince, she was always as distinguished by her virtues as by her rank; and my father on his death-bed told me that I might always confide in her, for that, in the midst of the terrible trial of universal bad example, no one had ever been able to cast a reproach upon her fame."
"It may be so!" replied D'Aubin; "it may be so! but doubt not, Eugenie, that she has passions and weaknesses too; and the confidence you gave her was misplaced. All has been revealed to me. I know everything that has passed, and therefore I am justified in saying that she has made us both her tools. Did she not tell you that I loved her--that I had vowed vows and made protestations at her feet? I know she did. I know that both by open words, and slight insinuations, she poisoned your mind against me; that she taught you to believe me profligate and base--"
"Never! never!" cried Eugenie, "never, upon my word."
"No matter," cried D'Aubin, "she made you credit that I loved her, not you; that by vows and promises I was bound to her. She it was that always crossed me in your esteem; she frustrated the arrangements for our marriage; she laid the scheme, and executed the whole of your flight from Paris. Is not this true? and do you think she had not a motive? Eugenie, I tell you she had. It may make me appear vain in your eyes; but, to exculpate myself, I must reveal that motive. Eugenie, she has loved me from our first meeting; she has loved me with all the ardour and all the fire of which an Italian is capable; but so to love unsought, is never to win love. She has teased me; she has persecuted me with her affection. But do not mistake me, Eugenie; I have never loved but you--you alone have I sought, you alone have I sighed for. To her I have turned a deaf ear and a cold heart. I care not for her, I love her not, I have never loved--ay! and though I scruple not to say that, no later than yesterday, I might have made her mine on any terms I chose--"