"Mam'zelle Zelie—at your service—I bring you this word from my master: best respects and affections. He bids me say the civil ceremony will be for to-morrow, as planned. But he mistrusts your clever aunt—who might indeed try tricks to interfere. And so ... you see ... to-night: straightway: will be the wedding, Mam'zelle!
"The priest is here. In me behold one happy witness! For the other—" He grinned. "Perhaps Madame Carron will do." He thrust a thumb at Bibi-Ri. "Or that young buck yonder. The master himself only delays his impatience a few moments formally to arrive when all is ready. Safely escorted, you can believe, in this place of so bad a reputation—from which, moreover, he promises to remove you at once."
To see the rascal strut, and what airs he took!
"Meantime, Mam'zelle—in attending—please will you put on your best frock and prepare yourself," he concluded. "And as your wedding gift ... the master has pleasure to send you herewith the precious chains and jewels in this box and asks you to wear them for his sake!"
Throughout this stupefying recital none of the rest of us stirred, you will conceive. And when he had done we could still only stare. A picture, if you like! Zelie, the unfortunate child: and there, distorting himself in gallant gesture, offering tribute, that foul ambassador! The glow of fallen embers in the fire smudged him with infernal fantasy—it lent her the softest flush, making her young beauty to quicken and to kindle. As if a guilty angel should stoop from the lower step of heaven to take a bribe of hell. For she assented: make no mistake.... She was going to assent. He tendered her a small black box of leather: she had a hand outstretched to it—when a word dropped sheer and arresting in the silence as a pebble in a well.
It was not Mother Carron who spoke: our crafty hostess was far too burdened just then under the collapse of all her craftiness. Decidedly it was not me. Remained only Bibi-Ri. And in truth, he it was: though the fact appeared as one of those momentary incredibilities of intercourse.
"Zelie!"
Now I cannot pretend to know, what lay in the mind of that young girl. Who could plumb such a depth? She had kept herself inscrutable. How she actually felt toward Bibi-Ri I had no guess. She had seen him pared like a carrot—humiliated as few could be—his little human folly and weakness exposed, his grand hopes and aspirations made sordid and slimy. Even his one effort, his scheme of shuffling her away into a convent which must have seemed the sorriest cowardice, had surprised no motion from her. But how she regarded him now was plain. In the slow lift of her head, the heavy glitter of her eyes—plain to read.
"Zelie," he said. "You can't go on with it."
"No?" she inquired.... "No?"