The Countess shuddered.
"What is there to consider? I am sick with hate!"
"What did they do?" questioned Honoria shrewdly. "They did not fight?"
"Would to God they had!" answered Rose's wife furiously. "But I am of too little account to bring gentlemen's swords to the crossing! 'What do we marry you for if not for our convenience?' he said, and sent me from the room. And Marius turned his back on me!"
She flung herself on the maid's bosom, clinging round her neck, choking with bitter weeping in her throat. In the darkness cast by the peaceful trees, alone in the free air with her one confidante, she let herself go utterly, the nameless passion that possessed her broke forth, tearing speech to tatters.
"How I have loved him! Bear witness how I have hated him, Honoria! Every time he looked at me 'twas as if he saw a smirch on his escutcheon. He never troubled to speak to me of any matter of his world, taking it for granted I could not understand; my people were not genteel; I should be waiting in my father's shop. But there was always Marius. Did he not follow me in Paris? Did he not wait beneath my window? Did he not colour when I spoke to him, as if I had been a princess, Honoria? Did he not?"
She freed herself from the maid's support, and leant heavily against the straight trunk behind her.
"My God! My God!" she cried violently. "He spoke to me after his brother's fashion, and I was scorned of both of them!"
Honoria looked at her curiously.
"I should not have thought it of Mr. Marius," she said; "but these great gentlemen are strange. But they are men," she added quickly, "and you are a woman, my lady. He was in love with you once, and might be again, I'll swear to it!"