"Embrace me, my dear child!"
As the marquis rode back again to the château he sat in the corner of the coach, meditating deeply over all that he had seen and heard. "The Chevalier de Monnière-Croix," he muttered to himself—"the Chevalier de Monnière-Croix." Then he suddenly aroused himself from his meditations, thrust his thumb and finger into his waistcoat pocket, and drew out the diamond that Oliver had given him. He held it in a dozen different lights, examining it keenly and critically. Finally he thrust it back again into the pocket whence he had taken it. "At least," said he, "his diamonds are real. Why, then, should he not be of noble family if he chooses? A half a million livres' worth of diamonds, and that, as he tells me, only a small part of his wealth! Very well, then, his uncle was a chevalier and he is a prince—the Prince de Golconda, if he chooses."
Oliver stood for a long while looking out of the window after the marquis's coach had driven away. He felt very uneasy; he wished that he had not told those lies; they frightened him. He felt as if he could see them already flying home again to roost. But he need not have been afraid. And then, besides, if there was a cloud, it had had a silver edge: the last words that the marquis had uttered had been: "My dear Oliver, let me hope that we may soon see you at the château—you and your mother" (that was an after-thought), "for my daughter Céleste will find it very stupid with no young people about. I shall not, however, be able to show you my collection of diamonds, unfortunately; they are at present—ahem!—in Paris."
Scene Fifth.—A garden at the Château de Flourens.
A garden such as Watteau loved to paint—bosky trees, little stretches of grassy lawn, white statues of nymphs and fauns peering from among the green leaves, a statue of a naiad pouring water from a marble urn, green with moss, into a marble basin, green with moss.
In front of all, the smooth river, dusked and dappled now and then by little breezes that slowly sway the tops of the tall poplar-trees. The little birds sing, and patches of sunlight and shadow flicker upon the grass.
Enter Oliver and Mademoiselle Céleste. She carries a pink parasol that makes her face glow like a rose leaf, and Oliver walks by her side.
That morning Oliver had paid his first visit to the château. His master had trained him well in the ways of the world during the twelvemonth he had lived with him in Paris; nevertheless, he came to the château quivering with trepidation. But now the trepidation had passed and gone, and it was all like the bewildering glamour of some strange dream—the presence of his love no longer dumbly reflected from the smooth, passionless mirror, but in warm living flesh and blood, breathing and articulate. She spoke; she smiled; it was divine. A little wind blew a gauze of hair across her soft cheek now and then as they walked together; her sleeve brushed against Oliver's arm, and Oliver's heart quivered and thrilled.