"That is true," said Bois-Doré, kneeling to receive the pledge. "I swear to you that I will not die, even as I swear that I will neither love nor glance at any other fair, so long as you shall not have torn from my heart the hope of winning yours."
[XXI]
They returned to the garden, where Monsieur de Beuvre greeted them with a bantering air. The grave and tranquil demeanor of Lauriane, the radiant and tender expression which the marquis could not dissemble, surprised him so that he could not refrain from questioning them, covertly though transparently, in D'Alvimar's presence.
But Lauriane replied that she and the marquis were in perfect accord, and D'Alvimar, unwilling to believe his ears, took that assertion for a bit of coquetry aimed at him.
Thereupon Monsieur de Beuvre's anxiety became very keen, and, leading his daughter aside, he asked her if she were speaking seriously, and if she were insane enough or ambitious enough to accept a spark born in the reign of Henri II.
Lauriane told him how she had postponed her reply and any definitive agreement for seven years.
After laughing as if he would burst, De Beuvre, when Lauriane urged him to keep her secret, had some difficulty in understanding his daughter's kindly delicacy.
He would have enjoyed making merry over the marquis's discomfiture, and he considered that to have laughed in his face would have been an excellent way to teach him a lesson.
"No, father," replied Lauriane; "on the contrary, it would have grieved him terribly, and nothing more. He is too old to correct his foibles, and I cannot see what we should gain by insulting so excellent a man, when it is easy for us to lull him to sleep in his reveries. Believe me, if coquetry is ever innocent in a woman, it is innocent when practised upon old men; indeed, it is often an act of kindness to allow them to enjoy their fantasy. Be assured that, if I should ever tell him that I am in love with some other man, he would be well pleased; whereas, if I had told him that I could never love him, he would very probably be ill at this moment, not so much because of my cruelty as of the cruelty of his old age, which I should have placed squarely before him without consideration or compassion."
Lauriane had some influence over her father. She procured his promise that he would abstain from teasing the marquis about his love-affair with her, and D'Alvimar, with all his penetration, suspected nothing of what had taken place between them.