'Call me Nicola.'
'Nay—nay—never again.'
'We were so happy during those long rides through sunny Champagne, when you knew me only as poor Nicola—were we not?'
'And as poor Nicola I loved you—loved you with a passion the strength and purity of which are known only to God and to myself! Happy? Oh yes! we were very, very happy, mademoiselle—happier than I shall ever be again.'
'Do not say so, I implore you?' she exclaimed in a low voice; while her fine blue eyes filled with tears, and expressed so much love and melancholy that my soul was moved, for her.
'Pity me, M. Blane,' said she; 'I was then, and am still, but the victim of circumstances. The time which I foresaw—the time when we would become estranged—has come to pass and now you can understand my sorrowful reluctance to hear you speak of love—to receive your offers of—marriage.'
'But why did you conceal from me your exalted rank? why did you not trust me with your name, your title, your secret mission? I had then guarded my heart by prudence and honour too; I would have steeled my breast against you—.'
'Had such been possible,' said she, smiling through her tears, and still clasping my hand.
'Oh, why did you trifle with a love so true as mine, by a deception so unworthy of us both?'
'The Countess d'Amboise, that creature of Louis, who has the key to his heart and secrets, to whom I intrusted myself at Paris, (a faithful adherent of ours, if she has no other virtue) advised me to maintain the character in which I first appeared to you on that night in the Place de la Grève; and dearly has that duplicity cost me.'