Heaven only knows what I said then, but love for poor Jacqueline and the desperation of my own plight lent me eloquence; thus rapidly and briefly I related all my story since the morning on which I had saved her life in the mulberry wood near the well by the wayside that led to our camp at Paramé, down to the present hour. Madame acknowledged that she had overheard enough to convince her that I loved her niece with respect and tenderness, but added almost fiercely that the vast gulf opened by our difference of position rendered that love a madness and a crime.
I acknowledged all this, and in terms that I cannot now recal, urged for the preservation of her family honour and her own high name, the policy of preserving secrecy in the affair; and she evidently felt the force of my argument, as it was a circumstance which would seriously embroil her with her brother the Maréchal, her son the Count de Bourgneuf, and perhaps with French society in general; though as a Frenchwoman she felt that she could almost forgive anything that had love for an excuse. After a time, I begged her to remember that I was an Ecossais, and besought her by the memory of the olden time, and her own early predilections, to pardon Jacqueline, if not me, for all that had passed.
This was assailing madame's weak point, and a hectic flush crossed the pale cheek of Jacqueline, as, no doubt, she thought of "the handsome Scottish Captain of milord Clare's Dragoons," of whom we heard so much every evening.
"Très bien, monsieur; am I then to understand that you are Scottish?" said she, in a gentler tone.
"I am, Madame. Let your favour for one whom you have so often said was dear to you—a soldier of fortune—plead for me now."
"'Tis well that this malheur has occurred here at my sequestered house, and not at the Hotel de Broglie in the Rue St. Dominique at Paris: but let that pass. We Bretons love the Scots as the friends of our forefathers in the olden time, and we all know that it was to the love of a young Scottish girl our brave Du Guay Trouin owed his escape from an English prison, and that in her arms he died in 1736.* But this painful matter must be ended, and a convent may cure mademoiselle of an infatuation which degrades her. To drive you, monsieur, from the chateau—"
* A love for the Scots and dislike for their fellow-subjects still exist in Brittany. See "Wanderings" there, published by Bentley, 1860, &c.
"The fate I own, with all humility, I deserve."
"Would be to ensure your death: but mademoiselle my niece has acted most unwisely—even culpably—in not confiding in me; and now you must be separated, and for ever."
"Alas, madame!——"