"Certainly, Monsieur le Marquis, if it is your wish."
"I thank you."
He walked lingeringly into the delicate little place, and seated himself at some distance from her, upon a small chair. Then the silence fell again, lasting several seconds. Victorine waited; her husband was nervously at a loss for words. Finally, seeing that she did not know how to help him, he began, in a low, impersonal tone:
"Madame, it is now four days since your return from your little journey to this abode, and—and to my nominal protection. During the month in which your place of retreat was unknown to me, I confess to having experienced extreme concern for your welfare. I believe that I have never spoken to you upon the subject of those short flights to freedom which, from time to time, you have been accustomed to take, in order to overcome, as I have understood, your always unfortunate tendency towards ennui. This one just passed, however, having been of so much longer duration than usual, I have taken the liberty of questioning your old servitor, Jérôme, whom you were so wise as to take with you as attendant. He has informed me that, so far as he has been able to determine, your conduct as regards any of my sex whom you chanced to encounter in that month, was eminently reserved and dignified. Upon this, madame, I venture to congratulate you. I have come to you to-night, however, with a proposal on which I have meditated carefully for some weeks. At first it will not improbably appear to you to be too unconventional and perhaps too uninteresting to be desirable; but I beg, for my sake as well as yours, that you will consider it from every point of view.
"I have thought, Victorine, that perhaps one reason for your carelessness about existence at Court was due to your entire indifference to any of the cavaliers there at your disposal. I should have surrendered my supposed rights to M. de Mailly-Nesle had I ever perceived that you desired him for your comrade. I have been impelled to the belief that you do not care for him. Therefore it is, madame, that I approach you to-night with the offer of myself to you, as devoted to you in heart and feeling, to be your companion as well as the protector of your name, or, as the Court understands the word, your lover. With this request I couple the assurance that my love and esteem for you are now far stronger than two years ago, when we were united in marriage."
The Marquise listened to this punctilious and delicate offer quite passively, with courteous attention, and no little amazement. When he had finished speaking, she sat for a little while contemplating him silently. He waited with patience while her eyes travelled over his stalwart figure and pleasant face. Finally, not without nervousness, she began her reply.
"M. de Coigny, I am now, at the beginning of our third year of marriage, eighteen years of age. Of course you remember how, for the first sixteen years of my life, spent in my family's estate in Berry, I was carefully educated for the position which I now hold. All necessary accomplishments and the code of etiquette were perfectly familiar to me before that age; but there were some few things—essential ones—about Court life of which they did not inform me. Just after my sixteenth birthday I left the château for the first time in my life. I was conveyed by my guardian to Issy, where, fifteen minutes after I had first looked upon you, I found myself your wife. You will pardon me, I am sure, monsieur, when I say that my untried emotions were so strongly affected as to be, one might say, shocked. We returned to Versailles, you remember, where I was at once presented to their Majesties. In the two days which we had alone together I had had time to admire you, monsieur. It might have come to be more than admiration. When, however, upon my first evening in the palace, it was revealed to me, inadvertently, what your generally accepted position in regard to Mme. d'Egmont was, I bitterly regretted not having been taught more truly what I should have expected at this famous Court; and, at the same time, I hastened, out of duty, to stifle at once whatever feeling I had come to have for you in forty-eight hours. So successful was I, monsieur, that I have never since been troubled by any emotion for any living thing belonging to this city and palace of Versailles. Such, then, must be my justification for the refusal of your very thoughtful offer. I can but thank you for it. I appreciate to the full the gallantry of your intended sacrifice; but I cannot permit you to make it. Believe me, monsieur, I must refuse."
The Marquis de Coigny had heard her in silence. Now, at the close of her unintentionally pitiful recital, he repressed an exclamation, and sat still, looking at her, for a long moment.
"How brutal I have been, Victorine!" he said, finally. "But I never realized. I never knew!"
His wife raised her hand. "Oh, monsieur, I beg of you, do not reproach yourself! I would not dream, indeed I would not, of blaming you in any way. It was only that I was young to the way of the world."