“No, my angel,” the letter said, “I cannot go to-night to La
Vivetiere. You must lose your wager with the count. I triumph over
the Republic in the person of their beautiful emissary. You must
allow that she is worth the sacrifice of one night. It will be my
only victory in this campaign, for I have received the news that
La Vendee surrenders. I can do nothing more in France. Let us go
back to England—but we will talk of all this to-morrow.”
The letter fell from Marie’s hands; she closed her eyes, and was silent, leaning backward, with her head on a cushion. After a long pause she looked at the clock, which then marked four in the afternoon.
“My lord keeps me waiting,” she said, with savage irony.
“Oh! God grant he may not come!” cried Francine.
“If he does not come,” said Marie, in a stifled tone, “I shall go to him. No, no, he will soon be here. Francine, do I look well?”
“You are very pale.”
“Ah!” continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, glancing about her, “this perfumed room, the flowers, the lights, this intoxicating air, it is full of that celestial life of which I dreamed—”
“Marie, what has happened?”
“I am betrayed, deceived, insulted, fooled! I will kill him, I will tear him bit by bit! Yes, there was always in his manner a contempt he could not hide and which I would not see. Oh! I shall die of this! Fool that I am,” she went on laughing, “he is coming; I have one night in which to teach him that, married or not, the man who has possessed me cannot abandon me. I will measure my vengeance by his offence; he shall die with despair in his soul. I did believe he had a soul of honor, but no! it is that of a lackey. Ah, he has cleverly deceived me, for even now it seems impossible that the man who abandoned me to Pille-Miche should sink to such back-stair tricks. It is so base to deceive a loving woman, for it is so easy. He might have killed me if he chose, but lie to me! to me, who held him in my thoughts so high! The scaffold! the scaffold! ah! could I only see him guillotined! Am I cruel? He shall go to his death covered with caresses, with kisses which might have blessed him for a lifetime—”
“Marie,” said Francine, gently, “be the victim of your lover like other women; not his mistress and his betrayer. Keep his memory in your heart; do not make it an anguish to you. If there were no joys in hopeless love, what would become of us, poor women that we are? God, of whom you never think, Marie, will reward us for obeying our vocation on this earth,—to love, and suffer.”