“‘Madame, you have perhaps forgotten, that in the time you have been my brother’s wife, you have had many declarations of love from me, and possibly from other gentlemen. True, I made not mine in set words, as I have done this day—but it would have been as well to have confided the secret of your marriage to me before this.’
“I was more angry than he at that—but Babache, no woman can help pitying a man who loves her, ever so little, if it but be true love—and I believe Regnard loved me truly in his way. I replied to this, therefore, with anger, but not without pity. ‘You made me no declaration in words, Monsieur,—and you must remember that every dictate of prudence recommended in these uncertain times, that my marriage with your brother be kept secret for the present, at least.’
“‘If prudence was your chiefest consideration, Madame,’ said Regnard, with a bow, ‘I wonder that you married my brother at all.’
“Babache, that would have angered any woman on earth, and as you know, I am not the most long-suffering person in the world. So I said: ‘Oh, no, you mistake 267 me, Monsieur. My chief object was to bind your brother to me—for I love him so much that I could not bear the thought that he should go away without forging a chain that would bring him back to me!’”
Francezka, still unconsciously acting her part, said this with such a depth of feeling, such love, devotion, admiration for Gaston Cheverny expressed in every tone of her voice, every glance of her eye, that it must have been wormwood to a haughty, jealous and disappointed man like Regnard Cheverny. And I made not the slightest doubt that she rather enjoyed Regnard’s humiliation.
“I perceive, Madame,” I answered, “that ladies can be cruel as well as pitiful to a man who loves them.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Francezka, sitting again, and leaning her head pensively on her hand. The dog had not stirred a foot from her in this time, and was watching her with a human look of love and intelligence in his tawny eyes. “And then Regnard, mastering his rage, said to me:
“‘I thought your coldness to me came from a careless and heedless indifference of an untouched heart. Now I know it to be the steady deception of a woman already a wife. I could not forget this if I would, and I would not forget it if I could. I have the honor to bid you adieu, Madame Cheverny.’ And he walked off, looking so like Gaston! And then I suddenly began to feel frightened at being frightened—do you know that feeling?”
“Yes,” I replied. “It is the form that fear takes with the brave.”
“I had thought,” said Francezka, “that I was exempt 268 from fear, and now I find it is my lot, just as much as any one’s, to feel fear as one feels heat or cold or thirst. But fear is the most terrible thing on earth. And now, Babache, I have opened all my heart to you. It has been so comforting!”