“And you left us free to discuss the affair which brought us here. Ah, Mr. Egremont, you are not a man to deceive, even when you try.”
“It was very right that I should leave you, mademoiselle,” replied Roger, courteously; and then, catching sight of Michelle’s face, he said,—
“I hope that your errand here will be for your happiness.”
“It will not,” she said calmly, “for my errand is to marry the Prince of Orlamunde.”
Although it was night, and there was no moon, yet could Roger Egremont see the Princess Michelle’s face plainly, and she could see his. At first he was so dazed by her words that he looked like a man suddenly struck a blow from behind, but quickly his countenance changed as his consciousness began to work of itself. The Prince of Orlamunde! Was he old or young? Was he a comely man or a hunchback? Was he marrying her for love, or was she being sold in a market? All these thoughts came roaring and rushing through his mind at once. Was she marrying for love? Ah, no. He knew the answer to that. He remembered that night by the charcoal-burner’s hut; those days together; those times when she recalled to him words that he had spoken, mentioning the very day and hour and place when they had passed his lips. And the thought brought rage quick and strong. All the time she was amusing herself with him,—mere soldier of fortune that he was, with a long sword and a short purse; and he had told her all—all—all,—confessions about his behavior in Newgate gaol, things that he had been ashamed to tell any human being—and she was laughing at him all the while, and going to marry the Prince of Orlamunde, princeling of a territory scarce as big as the estate of Egremont,—living, no doubt, in a kind of sixpenny magnificence, selling his country to the French King for a hundred louis d’or a month, perhaps. Oh, what a wretch must that Prince of Orlamunde be!
Michelle, watching his changing face growing dark with wrath, thought, as she had done more than once, how anger disfigured him. He was a dashing and personable man when the world went well with him, but let him but be crossed, and he was positively ugly.
He turned on her after a while, saying impudently,—
“Let me felicitate you, Mademoiselle d’Orantia. No doubt you are making a very splendid marriage. I understood before leaving France that the Prince of Orlamunde had an army,—a whole regiment, I am told,—which both the King of France and the Prince of Orange are chaffering for. You will live in a palace, have ladies-in-waiting, and a paraphernalia not quite so grand as that of the Queen of France, but something like it. And there will be Maintenons and Montespans, most likely—”
Roger stopped. The devil that had got hold of him in Newgate prison and had made a beast of him was now clawing him, but some spark of the gentleman in him checked his insults to a woman.
“You are quite right in all you say,” replied Michelle, in a thrilling voice. “And I shall hate it all, as you know,—the trumpery state, the small politics. I know of no woman who can bear them more ill than I. But a greater misery than all has befallen me. I go to be the wife of the Prince of Orlamunde when I love you, Roger Egremont, and would rather be your wife with nothing but the clothes upon my back than to be the Queen of France. And I am an ambitious woman too. And until we made this journey together I actually thought with pleasure of being Princess of Orlamunde.”