"Not yet. There is something further to be said--to be done."
And now he mastered himself with some great effort, so that, for a time, he was coherent, intelligible; and continued:
"Listen," he said. "You did not love me. I knew that well enough, I cared little enough upon that score. Yet I needed a wife; it pleased me--for a reason other than your beauty--to select you. I announced to all whom it concerned that I had done so. As for love, that had little part or parcel in the matter. There was no more love--passion is not love--in my heart for you than in yours for me. I have passed the time for loving any woman; but----"
"Why, then," she asked, gazing at him, "seek me?"
"Because I am the bearer of a great name, a great fortune. Because I despised the members of my family--they are all intriguing harridans who formerly despised me. Because I sought a woman at once beautiful, yet lowly, who should arouse equally their envy and their hate; who should sting these women to madness with mortification. That is why I selected you."
"You may now select another," she replied coldly. "Doubtless there are many to whom the holder of so great a name, so great a fortune, will prove acceptable."
"I shall not select another. Meanwhile, you have flouted me, exposed me to the ridicule of the whole court--me, Desparre--of the whole of Paris! Do you think that is to be quickly forgotten, overlooked? Do you think that I, Desparre, will do either?"
"You must do what seems best to you," she said, still coldly. "Monsieur le Duc, I am not your wife. What you may choose to do is of absolute indifference to me."
He became, if such a thing were possible, more white than before. Once his eye glanced at a chair close by as though he felt he must drop into it; yet he forbore. Instead, planting both his shaking hands on the table, he said:
"The trick was clever that you played. Yet--as you should know, you who haunted the gambling-hells of Paris with your precious guardian--you should know that, however clever a trickster may be, there is generally one to be found who is his master. Always. Always. He always finds his master, does that trickster. Shall I tell you of a cleverer trick than yours?"