Madame de Fonblanque spoke quite cheerfully and even gaily. She tapped her pocket gracefully.
“Here I have those letters of yours. They never leave me—particularly the one proposing marriage, and the half dozen in which you call me your dearest Athanaise and reproach me bitterly for not loving you enough. Just imagine the hurricane of amusement they would cause if read out in court with proper elocutionary effect.”
Madame de Fonblanque laughed, and Mr. Romaine positively blushed.
“What an infernal, infernal ass I was!”
“Yes, I thought so, too,” responded the pretty and sprightly French woman—“I have often noticed that people who can make fools of others, invariably, at some time in their lives, make fools of themselves.”
“I did,” answered Mr. Romaine, sententiously. “But I tell you, once for all, not a penny will I pay.”
“Ah, my dear M. Romaine, that is not for you to say. These breach-of-promise cases sometimes turn out very badly for the gentlemen. I can so easily prove my position, my respectability—the way you pursued me from London to Brighton, from Brighton to Folkestone, from Folkestone to Eastbourne—and these invaluable and delightful letters. It will be a cause célèbre—that you may depend upon. And what a figure you will cut! The New York papers will have a column a day—the London papers two columns. By the way, I hear you have leased a fine house at Prince’s Gate for the season. You will have to give up that lease, my friend—you will not dare to show your face in London this season, M. Romaine.”
All this time Madame de Fonblanque had been laughing, as if it were a very good joke; but she now became serious.
“There is a tragic side to it,” she continued, going closer to Mr. Romaine, and looking at him in a threatening way. “I know all about that visit to Dr. Chambers. No matter how I found it out—I know he passed sentence of death on you; and while this good, amiable Chessingham is doctoring you for all sorts of imaginary aches and pains, you have one constant ache and pain that he does not suspect, because you have so carefully concealed it from him—and the slightest annoyance or chagrin may be fatal to you. I know that you have tried to persuade the good Chessingham that you have every disease in the calendar of diseases—except the one that is killing you.”
Mr. Romaine walked rather unsteadily to a chair and sat down, burying his face in his hands. Madame de Fonblanque, after a moment, felt an impulse of pity toward him. She went and touched him lightly.