The marquis made no answer.
“God knows I loved her,” he said after a while, with a sigh.
“You loved her, my lord!”
“I did, by God!”
“Love a woman like that, and come to this?”
“Come to this! We must all come to this, I fancy, sooner or later. Come to what, in the name of Beelzebub?”
“That, having loved a woman like her, you are content to lose her. In the name of God, have you no desire to see her again?”
“It would be an awkward meeting,” said the marquis. His was an old love, alas! He had not been capable of the sort that defies change. It had faded from him until it seemed one of the things that are not! Although his being had once glowed in its light, he could now speak of a meeting as awkward!
“Because you wronged her?” suggested the schoolmaster.
“Because they lied to me, by God!”